"Did you see her? I'm glad my girls don't dress slutty."
She'd been wearing short-shorts and a tanktop as she entered the coffee shop, if memory serves. My friend had watched her come in, eyes narrowed, and made her thoughts clear. I was a single guy, so perhaps my bar for unacceptably provocative clothing was self-servingly high, but I didn't see what was so slutty. My friend, a twenty-something woman who ran a Bible study group for high school girls, thought otherwise.
I nodded, not thinking much of it at the time. We shared coffee and the girl she'd pointed out ordered, then left. In the weeks and months following the incident, though, I remembered what had been said and what it implied. After a decade or so of reading and conversations with feminist friends, I know that what happened was called "Slut Shaming," and I understand that it's ridiculously common.
As I sit down to write this post, though, I'm less interested in the concept of slut shaming per se, than the idea of behaviors that accomplish the opposite of what say we want. Lots of us have counterproductive strategies that we stick to for complex and sometimes strange reasons, and my friend was one of them. Like a lot of Christians, she believed that sexually provocative (and, God forbid, sexually active) young women were in danger. Not simply because premarital sex was sinful, either. While that was a factor, the enlightened-ish midwest suburban Christianity we subscribed to framed the dangers of premarital sex differently.
Young women, the theory went, were fundamentally vulnerable to predatory guys who would manipulate them and take advantage of their desire to be loved and accepted. They'd prey on those desires to get sex, leaving the young women scarred and tragically wounded. What made young women vulnerable in this way? The family-centric theories we held to emphasized the importance of caring, supporting fathers and strong, supportive peer groups to keep girls' metaphorical tanks full of love, acceptance, and encouragement. If they had those things from "healthy" places, they wouldn't be tempted to slut it up.
There are quite a few ways for this theory to ground itself on the rocky shore of reality, but there's an element of truth to it that's important to acknowledge. People who are seeking affirmation, acceptance, and affection will often change their behaviors to get it. Manipulative, selfish people often take advantage of that -- dangling carrots of emotional intimacy, or approval, or access to an exclusive peer group in exchange for what they want.
The problem with my friend's comment was one that I felt, but couldn't articulate at the time. Calling out someone who was "bad," and encouraging "her girls" for not being like the "bad girl," didn't give any of the positive encouragement that was supposed to keep them safe from manipulative horny dudes. In fact, it was the opposite: it was a way to draw a clear line between "her girls," the ones who were good members of the peer group, and "those girls" who violated its norms. Far from giving them the internal strength to resist manipulation, it simply offered a different peer-approval carrot in exchange for avoiding certain behaviors.
I don't want to imply that my friend didn't want the best for the women she was supposed to be mentoring -- she really did. And I don't mean to imply that the counterproductive approach she took was something unique to her -- I've done the same thing many times, and I'm embarrassed to admit how often shaming has been a part of my own advocacy for behaviors I think are beneficial. It's impossible, though, to deny that this "Slut Shaming" is an integral part of the mainstream Christian response to sexuality.
Genuinely supporting, encouraging, and accepting someone isn't about getting them to adopt a particular set of sexual ethics. In-group emotional rewards doled out to those who exhibit the right behavior is no different than the manipulation warned against by the "Love-starvation leads to sex" theory. I'd go as far as saying that people and groups who use that dynamic to keep horny teens on the straight and narrow are training them to respond to peer pressure, not training them to resist it.
No matter how promising the short-term results are, that should be chilling to anyone who genuinely cares about the emotional health of the people they know and influence.
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