Islam: Day 23 – Slut Shaming: Moral Criticism Gone Awry

Yesterday I wrote about my bad habit of criticizing others. There is a legitimate role for criticism, but it is often executed poorly.

The Atlantic recently published an article titled, “There’s no such thing as a slut.” Two sociology professors moved into a college dorm room in 2004 and interviewed a group of 53 college girls every year until they graduated.

They found that the female students frequently participated in “slut shaming,” where they would question and insult other women for their (perceived) sexual habits.

They also found that there was no objective definition of slut shaming, that there were double standards for wealthy female students and poor female students, and that the practice fostered a divide between wealth and poor female students.

To Armstrong, it seemed like even though the wealthy and poor women were slut-shamed roughly equally in private, it was mostly only the poor women who faced public slut-shaming. And it only seemed to happen when the poorer women tried to make inroads with the richer ones.

By Armstrong’s tally, more rich women than poor women took part in hook-ups throughout college. The poorer women seemed to notice that their wealthier dorm-mates were more sexual, but felt they couldn’t get away with being similarly libertine. The wealthier women, meanwhile, seemed unfazed by accusations of sluttiness if they came from their lower-status peers. (Think of Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian, for whom public displays of sexuality were the rocket fuel on which they jetted to fame.)

This is a good example of what Rumi meant when he wrote, “The fault is in the one who blames. Spirit sees nothings to criticize.”

These students were most likely very afraid of being labeled a “slut” and that fear drives them to criticize other students for their “sluttiness.”

But it’s also a good example of taking what has traditionally been considered a virtue, chastity, and enforcing it incorrectly.

The enforcement in this case was done hypocritically, and without the goal of helping others live in a more virtuous way.

For example, if these female students were truly concerned with sexual mores, they would first try to live up to an objective standard of sexual behavior.  They would lead by example.

One student spent all her time trying to cover up her sexual trysts, instead of trying to not have them in the first place.

The woman with the most sexual partners in the study, a rich girl named Rory, also had the most sterling reputation—largely because she was an expert at concealing her sexual history.

“Rory was going to lie till the day she died,” Armstrong said. “She would only have sex with guys who didn’t know each other. She constantly misrepresented what she was doing and didn’t tell people where she was going.

If the students wanted to legitimately help change their fellow students’ immoral behavior, they would gently broach the subject and come from a place of love and concern. They would make the point that perhaps casual hook-ups is not the most rewarding way to live, and that there are significant benefits to restraint. They would point out that casual sex may prevent you from truly getting to know someone, and as a result, may lead to you view people as objects, rather than complex beings. Their criticism should be elevating, not cutting.

I think there is still a role for shame, as I believe it helps recalibrate people to do and be better, but it has to be used correctly. Religion spends a lot of time defining moral and immoral behavior, but they also spend a lot of time teaching people how to live with others whose behavior you find immoral.

This is perhaps another reason why we should learn from religion. We may feel like we know right from wrong, but we don’t always know the best way to live these values and help others live these values.