Slut Shaming, Pt 2: women to women to men

Slut shaming comes down heavily on women, so why do females engage in it?  I might be accused of mansplaining this issue, however, since I'm a man, I don't have much of a choice. Since it's better for all involved if men understand the issue, too, being seen, and not heard isn't the better option.

I might not be female, but I do understand humiliation. I understand harassment, bullying and defamation. I can be fair about these when it's connected to slut shaming.  

Neither sex is monolithic in its view on anything. In fact, even on the issue of choice, pro- and anti- are split about almost even among women. (Among men there's a fifteen percent difference favoring antichoice).



Therefore, it should be no surprise that women are divided when it comes tolerance of other women's sexual behavior, what constitutes a "slut" and whether slut shaming is always improper. They can be as judgmental about other female's sexual behavior than men are. For example, in the Steubenville rape case that I discussed in Part 1, there was at least one female involved in luring Jane Doe into the assault. Probably even some were present at one stage or another.

As girls are socialized in adolescence, it's well-known that they are discouraged from sex. They learn to internalize monogamy as an ideal. Whatever else monogamy is, when it's the culture norm it's a also a way of rationing sex. If most girls in high school are serial monogamous, of course a girl who doesn't abide by that is a threat to their relationships. This dovetails with Judeo-Christian morality. Slut, as in the image of one, will be debased in every way by the time these girls reach college. (Much like the Whore of Babylon passage in the Bible, a famous slut shaming passage). These are values that tend to dominate a person well-after they're learned. 

Slut shaming has a dynamic with bullying and rape. For a rapists, it's a psychological source of contempt that leads to harassment and rape. In the justice system, slut shaming is a means of casting doubt on the accuser, either by bringing her lack of consent for sex into question, or by undercutting her status enough that people will agree the rape was justified or wasn't a serious matter. It's used to undermine the victim's credibility no matter how well the facts support her story, and defense attorneys know it's effective.

With bullying, a female's sexual decisions are used to knock her off the status ladder. Nobody agrees on exactly what a slut is. If you cheat on your boyfriend once, does that make you a slut? If you frequently have oral sex, would that make you one? If you have one serial monogamous relationship after another in quick succession, does that make you one? Every girl can be vulnerable to the insult. If it begins to stick, your status becomes so low that people will just lie
and add to your infamy.

By maturity, many women would have had the experience of being lied about, or knowing about lies leveled at friends. Their objection to slut shaming would be based on the fact that people usually get their facts about it wrong.

Probably the minority of women believe a woman neither be insulted nor denigrated due to their sexual decisions. But if modern sexual ethics are based on consent-- and as a consequence of individual rights, that's the only way-- there shouldn't be any public criticism or shame of a woman's sexual decisions, nor man's. Unless, of course, the sex they had wasn't consensual. 

How much are women, even non-religious ones, divided about it? I've chosen a few videos off Youtube. First this one from jennamarbles:

This video's not all bad, but I had to notice how she claims not to disdain sluts while ridicule oozes out of her words. In the end, she gives some condescending advice, which can be summed up with: don't make the decisions you're making, make the same decision I'm making.

This is an example of a woman who slut shames, and doesn't know it, because the inside of her head sounds so logical about it. It's a cultural norm, and there's nothing unusual about that in this culture.

She defines a slut by a girl who has a lot of casual sex. She tells us that she talking about only females everyone would call a slut. She shouldn't bother to define it. You might as well try to define the word n*gg*r. It's a term of insult. It has just enough meaning to do harm, and lacks just enough to be versatile.

She then goes into acts she disagrees with: such as, the one night stand. You have to note: ONS in the Internet age doesn't quite have the same meaning as it did before the early '90s. She's taking the '90s meaning of it. This is like looking at cars before the invention of seat belts. So, she makes the act look as unsafe as possible in order to set up a straw man.

There's one thing that explains the foolishness of the ONS she describes but doesn't specifically mention, and that's the use of alcohol. People get foolishly brave when they're drunk all the time. Jenna should have aimed her criticism at drinkers.

As for her "stupid sluts" who claim that anal sex doesn't count, there are females who are willing to do some very fancy mental gymnastics to avoid thinking of themselves as sluts. Any doubt a girl can muster to avoid the label will benefit her. It's denial of a label like "slut" that warps girls' thinking like that, it shows how harmful the label can be.

Jenna also shouldn't discount the possibility of irony, either. On the other hand, maybe the girl wasn't restricting encounters to anal sex and she only said she was? If she'll warp her thinking to avoid being called a slut, why wouldn't she lie in that way?

Jenna now has two categories of sluts: the reckless and the stupid (my terms).  After that, the one who sleeps with other girls guys (the slutzilla) and the one who gets pregnant and doesn't know who the father is. (Miss uh oh). These are all examples of what could go wrong with polyandry, but they don't have to, any more than every marriage must end with child abandonment.

Then at 5:35, she gives good advice: to check and make sure a woman who's drunk, who looks like she might leave with a guy, is cognizant of what she's doing. A woman should just ask another if she's staggering drunk if she's okay. I agree with this 100 percent. However, if she'd been giving out advice from the beginning rather than shaming that would have made this an excellent video. Instead, she engages in slut shaming before and after.

She admits toward the end that she doesn't judge a girl a slut by how she dresses, but by the contents of her orifices. She makes it into a joke, and implies that the problem with slut shaming is it's misdirected, too often judged by appearance, rather than sexual pactices.

Then she says monogamy takes a higher order of intelligence. It's not the subject here, but she's dead wrong about that. Some brainless creatures are monogamous, and biologists have found indications that strict monogamy in a species is a predictor of extinction.

Back to the subject, the problem isn't that the wrong women are being called sluts, the problem is that women are being called that at all.

Laci Green (one of my favorite youtubers) says everything else I believe about Jenna's vids better than I can, and she's a woman, so she carries more sway on this subject:

For women, this slut shaming amongst them is harmful. As far as rape goes, there are plenty of police, prosecutors, judges and jurors who are female. But many have similar views to what Jennamarbles expressed, and most of the time, slut shaming the victim involves her sexual history, not how she appeared on the night of the attack.

And rape itself, along with stalking, does involve a negative judgment of the woman, either categorically or personally. Criminals usually have contempt for their targets. Slut shaming gives them a source. When women reinforce it, the rapist might even have the delusion he's doing a public service. Don't scoff at this. The Rape Crew in Steubenville seemed to feel exactly that way.