Slut Shaming is Bad Actually

The Case For the Sexual Revolution

“Tugger”

There was a girl two years younger than me in high school who (allegedly) gave hand jobs to a couple of boys my age when she was a freshman. After that she was non-consensually nicknamed “Tugger” and boys would shout this at her in the halls on a daily basis. She once participated in a school play after which she and a few other cast members came out and performed the Soulja Boy “crank that” dance. The boys, always eager to participate in school events, excitedly joined in to shout “Supersoak that hoe!” at her every time the line came up. I still remember this because I thought it was really mean and gross even though I was a judgmental Catholic virgin (by choice!). But I didn’t find it particularly surprising. This was what a teenage girl growing up in my cultural milieu could expect if she made the mistake of casually hooking up with boys.

I did go to a Catholic school, so perhaps the slut shaming was marginally worse than in the average late 2000s Ontario high school environment, but this was not a particularly religious high school. In Canada there are four streams of publicly funded primary and secondary education: secular or Catholic and English language or French language. About a third of students attend Catholic schools and the degree of religiosity is relatively minimal: morning prayers, a religion course each year, monthly or quarterly mass attendance as a school and the occasional optional confessional. There were some students who weren’t Catholic or even Christian and the majority of us were from families of “Christmas/Easter Catholics”.

In case the treatment of girls like “Tugger” wasn’t a clear enough lesson on the perils of sexual impurity for women we were also explicitly taught about how our value would be irreparably degraded if we slept with multiple partners. I remember being shown an instructional video which compared women to socks: if you let a bunch of men wear the socks you’ll end up dirty and stinky and no man will want to wear those socks forever (wearing socks forever = marriage I guess?). But the “used tape” analogy as demonstrated in this video, or the comparison of impure women to chewed up gum were also common ways of communicating the same message. My point: the slut shaming was not subtle. It was constant, it was directed only at girls and it was often perpetrated by boys.

The Case Against the Sexual Revolution

In The Case Against the Sexual Revolution

Louise Perry

argues that, while there are certainly upsides from the sexual revolution, most notably the ability for women to control their reproduction, in terms of the sexual marketplace the sexual revolution has counterintuitively benefitted men more than women. Her central argument rests on two gendered facts, first that men are higher in sociosexuality (the desire for sexual variety and ability to separate sex from emotional intimacy) than women, and second that women are higher in agreeableness than men (neither of which I doubt). 

She notes how as reliable contraception became easily available and abortion was legalized, the most relevant risk for women that comes from sex outside of marriage, the bearing of unwanted children, was drastically reduced. That drastic change in consequences enabled the shift towards a more liberal sexual culture. The liberal view of sex focuses on consent as the most important (or sometimes the only) factor for deciding whether a sexual interaction was “ok”. In addition, she claims that liberal feminists have communicated to young women that “having sex like a man”, meaning sex with minimal emotional attachment, is empowering and liberatory and that discomfort with this is a result of sexist socialization. I think she exaggerates that point, but I also think it’s somewhat true. I’d expect there to be this sort of reactionary response as a result of our historically sex negative culture and the social ostracization of women who engaged in this sort of sex. 

She claims that the combination of these forces has led to a sexual marketplace in which sex early in a relationship is expected, putting people who prefer to get to know someone before sleeping with them at a disadvantage. Obviously, people who only want to have sex within a committed relationship or a marriage are at an even larger disadvantage. And, since women are lower in sociosexuality it is mainly women who want to wait longer. As a result, women end up having sex they’d rather not be having for several reasons:

1.     They’re agreeable, and so want to do what’s “expected” of them, which in our new liberal culture includes having sex relatively quickly.

2.     Because of this norm they also feel pressured to have sex in order to compete with other women on the market. 

3.     On top of that, they have been told by “liberal feminists” that they should enjoy this sort of sex and to quiet any feelings to the contrary. They incorrectly believe that casual sex can be fun for them if they can just get over the regressive views about women’s sexuality that society has taught them.

4.     And because they’re unaware of the differences between how men and women view sex they incorrectly take a man’s sexual interest in them as an indication that he would be interested in a relationship with them.

And so, she concludes that this has resulted in a sexual culture that prioritizes the needs of the highly sociosexual among us, mainly men, at the expense of those lower in sociosexuality, mainly women. I actually think her central argument is directionally correct, but that she grossly exaggerates the scope of harm while simultaneously undervaluing the benefits of sexual liberalism. Yes, a more liberal culture around sex has surely shrunk the pool of potential partners for women who want to wait more than, say, 5 dates to have sex. With sex being more available than in the past, a smaller proportion of men will be willing to invest months of their time into a relationship without sex while also agreeing not to pursue other sexual opportunities. But… I also think that a lot of women don’t want to wait more than 5 dates! 

If we step back for a second, what Louise has described is a major technological and cultural change which reduced both the physical (pregnancy) and social (slut shaming) costs women bear for having sex outside of committed relationships. And then we saw that women started having more sex outside of committed relationships, which… would be expected. Why would we not assume that, on average, women are having sex more quickly because they always wanted to? That they were waiting so long because the costs were so high? Why would we instead take the conspiratorial tone common in so much feminist literature that vaguely gestures to this all, somehow, being the work of men (in this case men like Hugh Hefner)? 

Liberal feminism!

Louise argues that liberal feminist rhetoric has convinced women that they should seek out and enjoy casual sex as an act of empowerment, but she fails to recognize that as a reactionary narrative. Reacting to the still very real slut shaming and focus on female purity that exists alongside it. While I’m sure she’s right that there are some campus and urban cultures that celebrate female promiscuity to such a degree that it confuses young women, convincing them that their feelings of discomfort should be dismissed as a result of patriarchal conditioning, she fails to acknowledge why women might be attracted to such a narrative. Many women are still growing up in very sex negative cultures with rampant slut shaming, and women may be attracted to excessively sex positive narratives as an act of rebellion against this.

While some women may later look back on their days of casual sex with regret, I think it’s good that we live in a culture where they can write viral essays about it without the fear of meaningful social sanction, as

Bridget Phetasy

did. And, notably Bridget acknowledges that she was drawn to being a slut as a result of sexual trauma. Yes, she says that sex-positive feminist rhetoric helped her to rationalize her behavior as empowering, but it wasn't feminism that initially got her there. In fact, she says in the essay that, as a result of being in a Catholic moral context:

The shame and guilt I grew up with regarding sex felt oppressive. I resented the double standard that men could be promiscuous and it would raise their status and a woman would be slut-shamed for similar behavior. My burgeoning sexuality would unfold as a reaction to these repressive religious orthodoxies, old school notions of sexual status, and trauma.

Bridget’s story is unfortunate all the way through. She grew up within a moral structure that made her feel shame for her natural sexual desires, then she was a victim of sexual trauma which led her to act in a self-destructive manner, and finally she was exposed to feminist rhetoric which unfortunately made the self-destructive nature of those actions more difficult for her to recognize. But Bridget having all that sex she regrets didn’t actually devalue her. I’m glad that we live in a culture where a woman with Bridget’s past is able to find a healthy romantic relationship - she’s now married and has a daughter. A woman in her position writing an essay like this is something that would’ve been basically unthinkable before the sexual revolution. It would’ve brought shame to her, her husband and her family. 

In her essay Bridget summarizes the thesis of Louise’s book in the claim that “unyoking sex from consequences has primarily benefited men”. Sure, some men, those that are attractive and confident enough to realistically find women who are willing to have casual sex with them, might benefit more than the average woman from a liberal sexual culture. But Bridget herself is both a victim and beneficiary of the sexual liberalism which resulted from the sexual revolution, as are most women. And for most women the benefits far outweigh the costs. I think Bridget’s story is worth reading and reflecting on, but ultimately, I don’t think it lends much support for Louise’s book. In part because Bridget is an outlier, having had far, far more casual sex than most women do. I love the way Bridget ends her essay; with the advice she hopes to share with her daughter at the appropriate time:

I’d tell her:

Sex can be empowering when you’re coming from a position of healthy self-esteem. If you’re coming from a place of trauma or insecurity, casual sex won’t heal that. In fact, it might set you back and undermine any progress regarding your feelings of self-worth. If you know your value, you’re less likely to sleep with someone who doesn’t value you. Cherish yourself and you will be cherished.

You shouldn’t have to withhold sex for a man to respect you; he should respect you regardless. Sexual empowerment has nothing to do with how many people you do or don’t sleep with—it has to do with how comfortable you are in your skin—no matter your decision. It’s not about waiting until you’re in love to have sex; it’s about making sure that first, you love yourself.

Don’t ignore that nagging gut instinct telling you “sexual liberation” leaves you feeling unfulfilled. You can still be sex-positive and accept that for you, sex can’t be liberated from intimacy and a meaningful relationship.

But, at least from my reading, Louise goes further than this in her recommendations. For one thing she explicitly suggests that women should withhold sex in order to test men, not necessarily a bad idea if you feel that sex is emotionally dangerous for you, or you’re just bad at filtering men on other metrics, but not something I would do if I were on the dating market. Overall, I don’t have many major issues with the recommendations that Louise closes her book with, because she doesn’t really recommend anything like rolling back the sexual revolution. Despite the title of her book I expect that she’d agree that overall, the sexual revolution has been a very good thing even if there are a few reactionary cultural narratives that we should examine. 

Victim blaming and safety

One area where I agree with Louise is on the insufficient education young women receive about how to stay safe when engaging with men. The concern with not being seen as victim blaming has inadvertently made it more difficult to talk to women about reasonable decisions they should be making for their safety. When a woman is sexually assaulted it is always the responsibility of the man who assaulted her, just like with any crime. But there are still things women can do to make the chance of assault less likely, just like with any crime, and these are things that I’d want any woman I care about to do.

Among other things, I’ve personally prevented a very drunk girlfriend from going home with a man she had met 30 minutes earlier in a foreign country because I just thought it was too unwise to allow. And I’m supportive of women (and men) doing these sort of patronizing things for the women they care about. But I was only worried about my friend’s safety, not the number of sexual partners she was racking up. I agree that we need to much more confidently tell women that it’s a bad idea to go to a private place with a man you don’t know while you’re both drunk. But if women choose to do so while being informed about the safety risks, we don’t need to figure out how to stop them, we just need to accept that risk tolerance varies across people. 

On the other hand, women report consenting (or at least not explicitly saying no) to sex they don’t want out of fear of the man retaliating, which I think is actually much less common than people make it out to be. I’ve personally done it a bunch of times (remember the Catholic virgin part) and the worst reaction I got was something along the lines of “you can’t be serious” after which I safely traveled home. If women are so agreeable that they’re having sex with men when they don’t want to because of some mild social pressure that they feel or a mistaken assumption about how likely it is that a man will react violently… we need to help women to get more confident about saying NO! Not shame all women for their sexuality so that these situations never come up.

The double standard around casual sex is often defended as an expression of the unequal risks involved for men vs. women, most importantly pregnancy and rape. For those reasons you’d expect both men and women to shame the women they love when they make unwise sexual choices out of concern. Reliable and available contraception as well as legal abortion and a reduction in the stigma for women reporting sexual assault have all significantly reduced the asymmetric risk of sex for women vs. men, but it will never be eliminated entirely. Still, that doesn’t mean that women ought to be shamed for the number of sexual partners they have even if they should be shamed for certain unwise safety related choices they make. 

Sluts are betraying women as a class

But another potential source of motivation for women to slut shame other women is that sluts, by making sex easily available to men, lower its value in the marketplace which weakens the ability of other women to use the promise of sex to incentivize commitment from men. Perry doesn’t explicitly lay it out this way but her concerns about the “change in expectations” could only arise from sluts lowering the value of sex. I get the logic… but I just don’t think women having sex they don’t want to is as big of a problem as she claims. Yes, there are some women, like Bridget Phetasy, that regret many of their earlier sexual encounters. But they regret them because they engaged in them for validation, not because they felt they had to as a result of sexual supply and demand.

And either way… neither of these explanations for the motivation to slut shame explain why the high school boys were the primary perpetrators when it came to “Tugger”. It’s true that women also talked about her in unkind ways and didn’t want to be associated with her, but the slut shaming was initiated and mainly perpetrated by boys. Not because they were concerned that she wasn’t protecting herself properly and didn’t understand the risks of casual sex, but because they had utter contempt for her. The result of her making her body so available to them was that they judged her less valuable as a person. The slut-shaming of this 14-year-old girl was not about the unequal risks that women face when they have sex or about supply and demand on the sexual marketplace. It was about her objectification by men and a purity culture which accepts that objectification when it’s “deserved”. By sexually engaging with these boys within that context she gave them “permission” to see her only as a sexual being and to degrade her on a daily basis as a result. 

Perry suggests that women feel pressured to have sex early in order to compete in the marketplace and that women don’t understand that men view sex differently than women do. But the message I got from seeing Tugger’s treatment was that if you have sex with men too easily, they won’t even look at you as a potential relationship partner. Now what is “too easily” is obviously contextual, but even in the New York city dating scene the common wisdom is not that you’ll have a better chance of getting a man to commit the earlier you have sex. In fact I hear women routinely advise women against having sex with a man too early given the concern that it could make him less likely to see you as a potential long term partner. Not everyone agrees with this line, but the claim that women don’t realize that men and women view sex differently is patently false. What exactly does Louise think the term “Fuck boy” refers to? 

The costs of repression

I’m not saying there are absolutely no good things that come from a more sexually repressive culture, but even the extremely toned-down version of it that I experienced left its scars. I started with the story of “Tugger” to illustrate the downsides of what was, relative to history, only a mildly repressive environment. Louise says:

I’ve spoken to a lot of women who participated in hook-up culture when they were young and only years later came to realize just how unhappy it made them. I’ve yet to meet anyone who has traveled the same emotional journey, but in the opposite direction. 

Well, I don’t wish I had participated in hook-up culture, but I do regret repressing my sexuality and I do resent being trained to feel shame for natural and normal desires. As a teenager and young college student I routinely turned down sex with people I liked, found attractive and were safe. That’s just a loss for me from my point of view. A minor loss that I can certainly live with but one that mildly retarded my development. I didn’t even know women masturbated until I was 18. Literally thought that no woman did it save the most freakish sex maniacs. That’s absurd. And I’m sure there are many, many other ex-Christians who feel the same way.

Paternalistic feminism

Louise brings up the Aziz Ansari case as a way of illustrating her thesis on what’s wrong with the current dating environment. I couldn’t believe it! The Aziz story makes my blood boil. The reaction to this story was the most patronizing and anti-feminist of anything that came out of the MeToo movement. In fact, the paternalistic narrative advanced by “Grace” herself and echoed by those who publicly reacted to it was what initially put me at odds with mainstream feminism. I even included it in my “Origin story” when I applied for funding from Emergent Ventures. I said: 

My feelings of discomfort [with mainstream feminism] began when I observed the excesses of the “Me Too” movement, the most memorable example being the Aziz Ansari story. The mainstream buy-in to the victim narrative advanced by Aziz’s date “Grace” felt infantilizing to women. While it was obvious that Aziz had acted like a pushy asshole in an after school special, the framing of the date gone wrong as some sort of assault implied a failure to recognize female agency and a patriarchal protectiveness of adult women, both of which are antithetical to the original feminist project which I support.

I agree with Louise that the fear of victim blaming has led to discomfort around informing women about the dangers of men and how to safely engage with them. And I believe that some women have sex when they don’t really want to and come to regret those decisions later. And I agree that casual sex is generally not very fun or empowering for women. But it’s important to remember that women are ADULTS! And adults get the privilege to make decisions that they’ll later regret.