Great minds think alike and, at the very moment I was tsk-tsking over Meghan Murphy’s sad fate, Zaklog the Great was posting this video:

Now, one of my pet peeves is video bloggers (“vloggers”) who post splendid rants but fail to provide transcripts for those us who would like to be able to quote what they say. As if he could read my mind, Zaklog the Great had a transcript ready when I asked for one:

I’d like to talk a little bit today about slut-shaming. There’s a real problem with it these days. We simply do not have nearly enough.

Let’s spell out exactly what the phrase “slut-shaming” means, shall we? It means criticizing a woman for promiscuous sexual behavior. Why, exactly, is this bad? Oh . . . I see. It’s unfair! Men do not get treated the same. Well, you’re kind of right. Men are not held to account for our sexual behavior nearly enough. This is unfair. I don’t know if I would say unjust because “fair” is a loose word, easy to sling around. “Just” . . . is a bit more hard-edged, however.

But, if you have an important rule that is not being enforced even-handedly, the sane decision is not to abolish the rule for everyone, but to enforce the rule for those who have been getting off light. We need more slut-shaming for men.

But don’t get me wrong. This is not just about men. There is also a dreadful dearth of slut-shaming for women these days.

You may object, however, that these rules against sexual promiscuity are not important, that, in fact, they are silly, and outdated, and passé. To that, I have a few replies. First, how’s that gonorrhea infection treating you? Did they get to it before it rendered you permanently sterile? Second, yes, these rules are important, and even more so for women than for men.

You see, and I know this is unfair, women tend to bear the consequences of irresponsible sexual behavior more heavily than men do. First, we have to establish some basic facts. Sex, you see, is how we get more people, who, in common practice, start out as babies. Now, there are all kinds of fantastic things that can be said about babies, but two drawbacks cannot be debated: Babies are expensive and babies are time-consuming.

Why do I bring this up? Well, if two people are having casual sex and a baby results, who generally ends up responsible for it? That’s right, the woman. Even if she manages to get child support from the father, which is a doubtful proposition in that situation, that is still a large burden for one person.

So, in purely practical terms, women tend to bear more of the costs of promiscuous sex. But that’s not all. You see, and I hate to break this to those of you who’ve been listening to feminists, but women and men are not the same. Women and men do not react to sexual intimacy the same way. And years of playing genital-tag leave different marks on women than they do on men.

There was a study a few years ago that showed that the odds of a woman being happy in her marriage go down as her number of lifetime sexual partners goes up. It also showed no such pattern among men. Is this unfair? Yes. It’s also reality. Sorry.

You put these two important facts together and it looks like enforcing societal rules against sexual promiscuity is even more important for women than for men. These rules protect women far more than they do men.

Now, societies have basically two options for enforcing their various rules: ostracism or force, mockery or the barrel of a gun. I, personally, think ostracism would be by far the preferable option here. Perhaps you disagree.

So yeah. Slut-shaming. We could really use more. Now go out and do your part!

Exactly right. Why does shame exist, anyway? Because if people were not shamed for doing bad things, they might do bad things all the time, like posting video rants and not providing a transcript. Shame on vloggers who do that — and praise to Zaklog the Great!

Share this: Share

Twitter

Facebook



Reddit



Comments