Thirst-trapping your way to the top

I must admit that sometimes… I'm tempted to slut shame

I wrote earlier this week that I think slut shaming is bad. Not because I doubt that young women and young men have asymmetric preferences and risks related to dating and sex, they very obviously do. And I agree with

Louise Perry

and

Ruxandra Teslo

that obscuring sex differences is bad for everyone. I’ve previously written about the evidence for sex differences and how I think gender stereotypes can be helpful without being unreasonably oppressive when we distinguish what is typical from what is moral (I call this well-aligned but loosely enforced gender roles). As I say in that piece:

The problem is not so much gender stereotypes, which are unavoidable given that the human brain operates as a pattern recognition machine, but morally weighty gender norms and the social punishment that gender non-conforming people have been subject to. Much of the desire to deny that gender stereotypes reflect average sex differences has been a reaction to the mistreatment of non-conformers. Historically gender non-conforming people have been subject to significant social, and sometimes economic, censure and exclusion.

That said, acknowledging representative gender stereotypes allows us to explicitly identify default lifestyles and relationship structures (gender roles), which tend to lead to productive and fulfilling lives for typical men and women. These can serve as rough frameworks for individuals to riff off while saving each of us from the burden of discovering the correct path for ourselves wholly alone, arrogantly assuming generational wisdom will only obstruct our individual expression. The reality is that while some of us are not at all suited to these default paths (and should not be shamed or thought less of for failing to comply with them), most of us are not as unique or complicated as we might like to think.

The reason I’m against slut shaming is because not all women (or men) are gender conforming and I don’t think they should be shamed as a result. As Aella has talked about many times people really do have “genuinely different sexual preferences” and, as a result, there are subcultures where the men on average find virgins less valuable than sluts. Let the sluts date those guys. You’re not required to find anyone attractive, but must you let them know? Moreover, I think the mainstreaming of the narrative that “casual sex is empowering for women” is a reaction to a culture where slut shaming was the norm, and that the less slut shaming we do the less power this reactionary narrative has. I feel this way about fat shaming as well although I recognize that there are toxic elements within the fat acceptance movement. This is just one of many examples where I think “the desire to deny that gender stereotypes reflect average sex differences has been a reaction to the mistreatment of non-conformers.”

All that said, when it comes to capitalizing on your sexuality within the workplace or intellectual arena I must admit that I’m tempted to slut shame. I’m tempted to call these women out and do my small part to bring their reputation down to the level I think is deserved for using these cheap tricks. I don’t actually do it. But I am so tempted to and I only resist because it would make me look pathetic and resentful. 

Sleeping your way to the top

So, am I being hypocritical to differentiate intentionally using your sexual desirability to help you succeed in a non-sexual domain from directly using sex to get attention or resources? When it comes to “sleeping your way to the top” we’ve decided as a society that this is not ok. So not ok that it’s illegal. And because of the relative power dynamic between a boss and an employee we’ve put the responsibility (and shame) for this behavior on the person demanding the sex rather than the person supplying it. 

But why is it that most people, including pro-sex work feminists (who would confidently say that sex work, while it has unique safety risks, is at base just like any other job) have a problem with sex being part of the trade in other industries? At least industries where sex is clearly unrelated to the product or service being provided. I think there are two reasons. The first is that it’s anti-meritocratic and to the extent that hiring decisions are made by anyone other than the company owners reflects misaligned incentives. This seems like a good enough reason for large companies and especially public companies to not allow sexual quid-pro-quos in the hiring and promotion processes. 

What about when decisions are being made by the sole owner of a private company though? Why can’t they make their own decisions about the trade off in the employee’s competence vs. the sexual favors (or even just eye candy) they’re getting in return? Here the case is harder to make and I’m sure people who lean more libertarian than I do would say it clearly shouldn’t be legislated against.

However, one reason to prevent owners from hiring on this basis is if you think it has the potential to shift the incentive structure so much that the provision of sexual favors becomes more or less required to find work in certain places or industries. It’s one thing to support the ability for women to make the choice to sell sexual access to their bodies. But I think that, for most people, sex work is degrading and dangerous and that you better be getting paid a lot more than the next best alternative to make it worth it. Given that, preventing sex work from becoming de facto required for women to be competitive in the labor market is a worthy and pro-meritocratic goal.

But is that outcome a plausible consequence? Well, you could say that MeToo revealed that this was exactly what was going on in the entertainment industry. Despite it being illegal, a very large percentage of actresses were trading sexual access for roles (although of course I realize this was not always consensual). Maybe the entertainment industry is too weird to extrapolate from though. An actor’s “competence” is hard to objectively assess and also correlates with their sex appeal. So it seems likely that in most other industries the competitive disadvantage you’d face from hiring heavily on sex appeal would prevent it from becoming a norm anyways.

Thirst-trapping your way to the top

Regardless, I haven’t actually been privy to many situations where someone was choosing to “sleep their way to the top”, and the ones I heard about during MeToo made me feel sympathy for the woman, not a desire to shame her. But I do feel the desire to shame women who I see using their sex appeal to help them succeed within the intellectual marketplace. Women who explicitly and intentionally seek out simps. I hate to admit how much it grinds my gears. Sure, I can make an argument that when women do this they betray a lack of confidence in their intellectual output. But still, why should I care? Everyone can judge her work and decide if it’s good enough for them to engage with regardless of her own level of confidence in it. Or I could complain that it lowers the overall quality of the discourse since factors other than the quality of the ideas and arguments are used to determine who gets attention. But that’s really stupid because of course many different factors determine who gets attention: humor, style, aesthetics… sex appeal - it’s up to the consumers to judge the product. What this complaint really expresses is irritation that not everyone agrees with me about what factors they appreciate in the content they consume, reminiscent of when a bunch of Twitch users got mad at the “Just Chatting” girls.

So if a woman wants to use her attractiveness as a lever to gain success, what is it to me? Because! She’s betraying women as a class (which to be clear is a reason I don’t actually think holds any water). And because I think it actually might work. Just like sleeping with your boss can actually work. And as someone who doesn’t want to trade on how I look I resent anything that pushes the incentive structure in a direction that rewards that. All that said, I think I’m wrong to feel this way. Personally, I think trading on your looks is disempowering but it’s not clear everyone feels that way. Some people are smart and beautiful and others are dumb and ugly. And some people are willing to trade on their sexuality while others aren’t. So while it might annoy me, there’s no good reason that people who are willing to “go there” shouldn’t be rewarded for it. And there’s no good reason for me to shame them.