The Nobility in Slut Shaming

Author: Jason Sutherland, March 18, 2012.

Next month is the first anniversary of Slutwalk.  A feminist protest march against free-speech, self-responsibility and healthy fraternization between the sexes.  It is going to be interesting to see how many sluts come along to this year’s planned slutwalks and how many of them will, like myself, having reflected on the matter for a few months have come to the conclusion that supporting the original Slutwalk was one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done.

Before I get onto why slut shaming is a worthwhile and honourable pursuit in our society, I just want to quickly rehash why Slutwalk was anti-free speech, pro-irresponsibility and pro-sexual perversion.  Slutwalk started when a group of feminists got their knickers in a twist because a Toronto police constable said that “women should avoid dressing like sluts,” to reduce the risk of being raped or sexually assaulted.  Note that this police constable didn’t do anything, he only said something.  Also, he was a constable, not even a senior policeman.  He merely expressed his own opinion, which to me contains some sage advice: don’t bait the wolf if you want to be safe outside the village at night.  (Note: I have to say this, because some people seem to think I’m saying, “all men are wolves who would rape if they had a piece a jail-bait dangling in from of them,” I was using an analogy of irresponsibly behaviour, not making a suggestion that all men are sexual predators.  Some men do rape, the vast majority of men don’t rape and will actively intervene to prevent rape.)

The worldwide protests that erupted following this statement illustrate how insane the typical mainstream feminist is.  Street protests of this scale usually erupt because of something someone has done: start a war that kills many thousands of people, introduced a law that forces a significant proportion of the population to live in squalor or mismanaged billions of dollars of other people’s money.  You know, protests over something that someone has actually done, as opposed to merely something that someone has said.  To protest over someone else’s opinion, is to attempt to silence that person which is anti-free speech and therefore anti-democratic.  Also, when people protest a real issue, like the Vietnam war, civil rights or the protection of banks through public theft, the police usually jump in and start beating people senseless.  Ironically, the more justified their cause, the greater the police violence usually is: they actually shot people dead on university campuses for protesting the invasion of Cambodia.  When slutwalkers start getting beaten senseless by police or state-hired thugs, then I might start taking them seriously.  But the fact that no government took a slut walk down tells me that governments will endorse anyone who is anti-free speech.  I wonder if the state would beat up anti-“the 99%” street protestors?  Personally, I’m going to stand by Constable Michael Sanguinetti because he has the right to express his opinion even if the whole world disagrees with it, and frankly, I do agree with him, it was good advice.

The second point, is that slutwalkers are trying to get women exempt for being self-responsible.  They are effectively saying that men, not women, are responsible for protecting and keeping women safe which is chauvinist to the stratosphere.  Imagine we reversed the sexes.  Some men after walking home from a soccer match at which their team won and they notice a group of miserable looking drunk supporters of the losing team in a bar.  If the men from the winning team walked up to the losing team drowning their sorrows and started ridiculing them and waving their team’s victory in their face how sympathetic are you going to be if those men get the shit firmly kicked out of them?  I’m not saying that violence is acceptable, I’m saying, provoking a fight then complaining about the consequences is stupid and an irresponsible thing to do.  If a woman dresses like a slut, teases drunk and sexually frustrated men in a shady bar late at night, it doesn’t make the rape/sexual assault ok, but it does tell me that that woman is a stupid irresponsible twit, and honestly, I have has much sympathy for her as those soccer fans: nil.

Why? Because it isn’t logical to respect a person who won’t respect themselves.  Self-responsibility is self-respect.

If women want to be taken seriously in society, as equals to men, then they need to shoulder the same level of responsibility for their decisions as men do.  Slutwalks are nothing but organised public whinging sessions about how hard life is for women.  Life is hard for men too, but men can’t complain about it because men are “privileged,” supposedly.  The men have to grow a thicker skin and for the sake of freedom of speech, the slut walkers need to grow a thicker skin too and stop whingeing about a perfectly honourable activity: shaming sluts.

Slutwalk is pro-sexual irresponsibility.  To be clear, I’m a biologist and I’m fascinated with culture and sexual history.  I’m certain that being a polyamorous licentious troupe of sex crazed apes is our natural sexual behaviour as a species.  Nearly every nomadic human tribe studied loves a good public orgy with a terrifyingly low age of consent.  Being slutty is a human instinct.  However, we ain’t nomads anymore.  We now live in massively over populated cities with limited personal geographical mobility and more sexually transmitted diseases than ever before.  In many ways our lives are more dangerous now than they were ten thousand years ago and the sexual free-for-all days of our past are going to get us killed either by sexually transmitted diseases, failure to adequately provide for and nurture our children or our current inability to balance the state budget because the state is being forced to be a husband to “empowered women” who no longer take marriage seriously and choose to be dependent on the state instead of a husband.  Because it is more “empowering” to depend on a massive faceless state machine for protection and money than to depend on a man you can talk with, if and when, you want to, excuse my sarcasm.

Sleeping around with whomever you like, whenever you like, is fine, so long as you don’t consider the consequences.  The consequences of being a slut are: contracting an STD, infecting other people with your STDs, getting pregnant, getting pregnant to a stranger, getting pregnant to someone other than your husband and getting pregnant without a husband or without adequate family/community support to raise a child.  Those are some pretty damn serious consequences for being a slut, and they don’t just affect men.

Reasons why men and women want to publicly shame sluts:

1. A warning to others: By publicly calling out a person as a slut one is doing a public service.  One is spreading useful information about a person.  Men informing other men of a woman’s sluttiness are telling them she might carry STDs, she’s quite likely to commit paternity fraud and she’s a risk of “accidental” pregnancy.  They aren’t necessarily saying, “don’t go out with her,” they may merely be saying, “be careful, she’s dangerous, she might do more harm than just hurt your feelings.”  Women might also publicly call out a slut because they care about reducing the spread of STDs and the cost to society, both financially and socially, of single mothers.  I’m sure there are plenty of responsible working women out there who feel frustrated they’re paying higher taxes so the government can mitigate the consequences other women’s irresponsible sexual behaviour.

2. An incentive to change ones behaviour: Public shaming, is used with children all the time as an incentive to stop harmful behaviour like starting fights; breaking other children’s toys, crying wolf, etcetera.  Interestingly, it still works with adults, perhaps even more effectively than with children, yet it is not politically correct to publicly shame an adult because, who knows, it might hurt someone’s political career to expose them as a lying scumbag or a paedophile (never mind the victims of lying politicians or paedophiles).  Publicly shaming sluts teaches them to be more sexually responsible which is a good thing.  If you think being sexually irresponsible isn’t bad, you really need to tell someone with HIV, herpes, crippling child support payments, or a single mother living in a slum with several children from several different men.

3. A deterrent to future sluts: When a slut is publicly humiliated, the future slut-wannabes watching this humiliation get it explained to them, in no uncertain terms, that being a slut is not a good thing to be.  It will make them think about it more, they’ll think about the consequences of their actions and, lo and behold, they might practice responsible sex.

4. As revenge or to eliminate a sexual rival: Sometimes people do slut shame for the wrong reasons.  Either they shame someone who isn’t a slut, which is being dishonest or in old fashioned speak “dishonourable” (back in the day when people had a sense of honour), or they call someone out as a slut purely to eliminate them as a sexual rival.  While the latter is selfish, it’s doing the right thing for the wrong reasons so it doesn’t bother me that much.  However, the former, calling slut when a person isn’t a slut is a serious offence.

Of these four reasons why someone would call someone else out as a slut, three of them are wholesome and valid reasons, only the last one isn’t.  Feminism wants us to throw away a noble and honourable social practice of slut shaming because it might be misused.  Well, everything can be misused, should we ban plastic bags because they can kill?  Should we ban bath tubs because people can drown in them?  Should we ban language because it allows people to lie?  Get a fucking reality check: a slut is not a good thing to be and if you are a slut, you should feel ashamed for yourself.

However, this attitude of it’s ok to be a slut was displayed again recently by the feminist lobby when they censured Rush Limbaugh, or rather by using political intimidation, denied him his right to freedom of speech.  Rush Limbaugh was right, they are selfish sluts, when the feminist lobby say they want the government to pay for their contraception (which isn’t a necessity) they are saying that they expect the tax payers (mostly men) to protect them against their irresponsibility for no gratitude.  Even as the United States is being crushed by toxic levels of debt, the feminist lobby still care more about their own personal interests over the interests of their community: that is to say, “fuck society, I only care about me.”  That’s the narcissistic corrupt mentality that John F. Kennedy was talking about when he said, “Ask not, what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”

A slut only thinks about their immediate pleasure, they don’t think about the consequences of their actions, if they did, they wouldn’t act so irresponsibly.

If there was not a risk of STDs (found in closed hygienic tribal communities), no risk of pregnancy or in the case of pregnancy that the child was assured a strong community to support and raise the child (found in a tight-knit tribal community) and if paternity fraud wasn’t a concern of the father (found in a tight-knit tribal community) then it is easy to understand why being a slut was par for the course in prehistoric nomadic times for the human species.  But we don’t live in nomadic times anymore.  It’s a dangerous, complicated and ruthless world, and the best defence is to be responsible and to act responsibly, and that’s going to have to mean using a lot more self-control than is comfortable most of the time.  But you either accept that, or you accept that sooner or later your irresponsible decisions will eventually kill you, if not countless others collaterally, on the way to your eventual demise.  I hope you don’t feel shy calling out a slut the next time you see one, if there’s an irresponsible nitwit in our community, letting everyone else know is the most responsible thing you can do.

Further Reading

Please check out the following websites for more information:

• A Voice for Men
• The Spearhead
• Man Woman Myth
• Anti-Misandry

Want to read more about my views on feminism and gender issues?
Here are some of my most recent ones:

• The End of Women
• Feminism: A Tale Full of Sound and Fury
• Dying in Silence
• Secret Men’s Business

• A Year Later, SlutWalks Are Still Relevant – And Necessary (asterisky.com)
• SlutWalks: A New Wave of Feminism (365daysofwritingclw.wordpress.com)
• Slut Cat Walk (behance.net)
• Hundreds Join SlutWalk Israel on Facebook and the Streets (greenprophet.com)
• Proud to be a Slut (bigthink.com)
• Israel’s first ‘SlutWalk’ protest hits the streets of Tel Aviv (haaretz.com)
• “Controlling The Sexuality Of All Women”: To Reclaim Or Reject “Slut”?: (mykeystrokes.com)
• SlutWalk Vancouver and Men Can Wear Dresses Too: May 15, 2011 (femmesblackmarket.wordpress.com)
• Malawian women protest after attacks for wearing pants, miniskirts (radicalhub.com)