Should We Slut Shame?

<p>In this thought-provoking discussion, we analyze the historical roots and social purpose behind the practice of "slut shaming." We explain how in monogamous societies, sexual promiscuity by some women lowers the value proposition for more chaste women. This creates motivations to apply social costs to casual sex.</p><p>We argue slut shaming emerges as a way to enforce cultural norms around sexuality and relationships without needing formal legal coercion. Shaming works best inside a cultural in-group. Attempting to shame outsiders often backfires by making your own group seem regressive.</p><p>We also discuss whether slut shaming still "makes sense" today, as cultural norms have shifted. Ultimately we contend it remains relevant for traditionalists seeking partners with low "body counts." Signaling those values clearly is worthwhile, though trying to broadly change mainstream behavior is pointless.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> [00:00:00] You know, infrared systems.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> But what are you hunting for humans? No,</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> you don't hunt for humans not smoke. We don't talk about that Yes, this is recording now. You can't talk about that Thing for our friends This is a joke, obviously we don't hunt humans recreationally at night we don't engage in</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> the ultimate sport</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> You don't call it the ultimate sport.</p><p>It is a sport. I'd hardly say it's the best sport. It's anything mediocre because we don't like it.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Isn't the ultimate sport winning hearts? Right.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> Yes! That's the ultimate sport, Throne. Mm hmm, yeah, that's the ultimate sport. I really admire you. Okay, so this episode is a good one, I hope, I hope. What we're going to talk about is slut shaming.</p><p>We're going to talk about why [00:01:00] People may slut shame. Like why historically this train came about because like people don't just hurt other people for no reason, right? Like if they're shaming you, if they're doing something, there's a reason for that. Either it's an immediate self interested reason or it's because cultural groups that engaged in this practice outcompeted cultural groups that didn't engage in this practice.</p><p>In the case of slut shaming, it's a bit of both. And then we're going to evaluate. In a modern context, does slut shaming still make sense? With this question being asked in two categories. Does slut shaming make sense if you slut shame people of other cultural groups? Like, does that have utility? And does slut shaming make sense within a cultural group?</p><p>Does it make sense to slut shame members of your own cultural group? So first, Simone, do you want to go over what slut shaming is for people who may not know?</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Ah, yes. Slut shaming involves both male and female public [00:02:00] criticism, often to other people, though often to the subject themselves of someone's sexual promiscuity.</p><p>So I think a lot of people define a slut as someone who actually like sleeps around a lot. bUt slut shaming in its traditional context could involve literally just shaming a young woman for losing her virginity early. And just then call her a slut because she like literally had sex with her boyfriend at age 16 or something.</p><p>And it is It is an interesting innovation. It's been around for a long time. Well,</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> hold on. I'd expand it further there. Another area where I often see slut shaming, and I think this is, you know, when I remember in high school</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Oh, just for dress, right? Just looking</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> sexually provocative? No, I get it.</p><p>It's just dress or action. You know, when I didn't like a woman I remember in groups, they call them the sluts, you know, and I think even just generally like not necessarily, they had done something that showed improprietary, impropriety, improper, it was improper. Yeah, it was just seen as a negative general thing to say about somebody.</p><p>[00:03:00] And so it was frequently used to describe a people who you didn't like, but of course, Isn't</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> so like people would often refer to guys that they were making fun of as gay. Or some variation of that. And then they would refer to women that they didn't approve of as sluts, regardless of any sexual signaling whatsoever.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> This is our generation, by the way, we're not talking, I don't think this is true as much anymore, especially. It is</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> interesting to just like. Use it as an approximation. I guess it's kind of like culling someone mentally disabled in some way, like choose</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> whatever word of the time. I think because they were trying to elevate the, the worst things that they could think of each gender succumbing to from the, the, the cultural perspective of the time, normative behavior, women, it was sexual impropriety.</p><p>It was men. And it's, it's very interesting. Yeah. Well, no, I won't even say sexual deviance. When people in my generation, so I grew up in, in Texas, you know, and a long time ago. I'm 36 now. You're very old. I'm very old. Prodigiously ancient. [00:04:00] So yeah, so when they would use the word gay derogatorily of other young men or, or things, they'd be like, oh, that's so gay.</p><p> They didn't mean, even at the time I thought it was off. Like I didn't. Really do it myself, which you know, thank god. There's no hidden recording of me ever being, no, because I, I, I was really involved with the gay community even like, like early on, but anyway, so, they didn't mean it in a way where they were saying that these individuals were interested in same sex relationships.</p><p>That would not be seen as like the highest negative to being this derogatory gay. It was meant to mean that men were not living up to masculine ideals.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> It, that's funny because I feel like honestly the most masculine high testosterone subgroup of men is</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> gay men. Well, yeah, and that's what I mean.</p><p>And I think that that's why there was this, uh, disconnect for a long time where, where a lot of people when they would use this word in a derogatory context, they didn't think of themselves as hurting the gay community [00:05:00] because they did not mean it of the vast majority of the gay community.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Right. They weren't actually referring to.</p><p>I guess if anything it's a derogatory word just because it refers to Well in their mind from condoned societal norms per their perception. Yeah Yeah,</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> the negative effects it had were they're all the same, you know But i'm just pointing out that this is this is what we meant. So that's really interesting there.</p><p>And I and I I wonder if we lost away Sorry, just just a total tangent from the slut shaming thing Did we lose a way to insult men for not being masculine because we tied the core way that we would do that insult to the term gay, which had a separate meaning. Well, I think now that's why</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> what we've discovered, I think we've realized that subtly, subconsciously as a population, and that's why we use the word cuck more recently.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> Oh, wow. Yes. Yeah. Actually, yeah, we use pussy for a [00:06:00] bit, which didn't really catch on as much. And then cuck, that is so perfect, and it's also a perfect thing. When people of my generation said something was gay, or they said somebody was gay, that was much closer to them in today's language, calling that thing cucked, or calling that individual a cuck, than it was in today's generation.</p><p>We're like, like actually being derogatory towards someone for having a same sex relationship.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Yeah, and I feel like even now, Cuck is kind of out and we're into more cringe and cope, um, which maybe is even more a reflection of like obsession, contemporary obsession with mental health. I don't know. Or</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> like, yeah.</p><p>Oh, by the way, an interesting thing about cucks is that conservative men in our data and in other studies that have shown are actually more likely to be turned on by cuckoldry than progressive men. I don't know why. It's not a big effect. It's like a 10 percent difference, but it's, it's weird. That's still meaningful.</p><p>You know Yeah. I mean, it's, it's fun if you're writing an article or something. [00:07:00] Anyway. So slut shaming. So why did slut shaming first evolve, right? And where do you see slut shaming the most? So historically, if a woman accidentally got pregnant before marriage, that was really bad for a culture and not just a culture, but a town, a village, because the kids that these women had, you didn't have a state welfare systems, right?</p><p>Like this money was not as widely distributed. That individual became a ward of the state. And, and even then, you know, they were much more likely to end up going down a criminal life path, or if they didn't, they'd end up going down a criminal life path. And today, you know, it takes a long time for a kid you don't care about to become a criminal in a daily past, right?</p><p>Like that individual typically has to become like 21 or something before they're really a danger to other people often. This is not true. If you go even back to Victorian England, you know, if you look at Oliver Twist, [00:08:00] right, like a huge subplot of that was the orphan pickpockets, right? Like, but, but, but, you know, and that they're not shanking people a lot and stuff like that, but that was what they did in real life.</p><p>So it</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> still sucks. No one wants to have their pocket picked.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> Well, I mean, a woman who, who in these historical context who had a kid outside of wedlock, you know, you're 10 years away from a little gremlin with a knife stabbing your, your spouse, you know, like, there was a much shorter like timeline to like the negative effects of this.</p><p>So that, that was like one core thing that they were afraid of this, right? Like that an individual would get pregnant and they wouldn't have a partner to support them. And it was while women actually worked back then, and I'm going to put up a. Statistic here that shows that a lot of people think that women in like, you know, you go to the distant</p><p>past didn't really work.</p><p>They did. They worked at about the same rate that they do today. A little less than men, but nothing like, you know, the 50s and the 60s. What we actually had was women's employment, was high women's employment, then a dip down, then a back up. But, even with all of that they [00:09:00] You know, it's difficult to rate the kid in a single income family, and the types of women who were doing this, you know, if they then wanted a partner, they would have to find a way to get rid of the kid, which again meant orphan, right?</p><p>Because life as a partnered woman is much better in most of these communities. Okay, so that was one problem that you had, so, so, so that was a negative. But... Then you have a secondary problem, which I think is the much bigger reason that slut shaming has been carried out more recently, which is in monogamous majority countries, right, which is, and as we point out, you never have an all monogamous society.</p><p>Wealthy men are always polygynous. The thing I always point out is, is the, the peak of Catholic culture, right? You know, today we talk about trad cast and everything like that and people think of them as being the most monogamous culture. The peak of Catholic culture was Louis the 14th and, and that was a, you know, in, in that culture, you know, that was high French culture, right?</p><p>And we had many, many concubines and stuff like that in [00:10:00] many. So if you have enough wealth in a society, no matter how much it turns towards a monogamous cultural practice, you're always going to have some level that there</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> was shaming.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> There was shaming. There was shaming, but we'll get to that.</p><p>Okay. But we've got to talk about why shaming and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay. Okay. So why is monogamy useful for a society, right? Monogamy is useful for a society because it lowers the number of unpaired men in a society. Great studies done on this that look at similar cultural groups, you know, economic similarities, etc.</p><p>in parts of Africa, because that's where you'll often have cultural groups right next to each other. We'll have one that's monogamous and one that's polygynous. Not poly, polygynous, one man, many women. Poly basically doesn't happen naturally. It's a weird modern phenomenon that We can maybe do another video on it.</p><p>I think we did, actually. The Are We Monogamous video is kind of on the question of Polly. But anyway, okay, so, what you find is you have higher rates of terrorism, you have higher rates of stealing, you have higher [00:11:00] rates of prostitution, you have lower trust between individuals. Basically, everything that can go wrong does go wrong.</p><p>This is due to what we call in our books the free radical problem. The free radical problem is the number of men That are unpaired in a society is highly correlatory with the amount of social ills in that society. And it's because their biology sort of goes crazy and of course, you know, it's sort of an all or nothing breeding strategy for them.</p><p>And if not, then just a spite strategy. Now what's interesting... Is there are some studies that counteract this when men choose male dominated societies, i. e. like mining towns and stuff like that, you often don't have these same negative effects at the high levels that you would expect. But I think that might be a choice thing, you know, like these men are saving up wealth until they can leave and then go and find a partner.</p><p>Yeah,</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> there may be the expectation that they will eventually be able to get. I think also there's the effect of just seeing other people have it and you not having it. I mean, psychologically, that's a really [00:12:00] big thing is, you know, we, we don't, there is no like universal basis for human dignity or comfort.</p><p>There's always, it's always relative. It's well, I need a big screen TV to have my human rights met because everyone else is a big screen TV. So I think that's another big factor.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> Yeah, okay, anyway, so, you, you get to societies that are mostly monogamous, most of the ones that we're coming from are on the monogamous side of the spectrum, and there's a lot of benefits to this, you know, it, it means that it helps.</p><p>When a partner matches another partner, both partners are largely pulling each other off the market. Mm hmm. And this is a really positive effect for, for the rest of society because it means that you can theoretically get a society where, like, 90 percent of males and females are paired with each other, assuming you have similar gender ratios.</p><p>Now, you do run into some problems if, like, you are dating downwards in terms of age and you have a quickly growing population because that means the number of men... [00:13:00] Is always going to be quite, quite, a little bit smaller than the number of women, you know, and this is the problem you see in, in some orthodox like Jewish communities where they'll date a few years down, like five years down or something like that, and what that ends up meaning is because the population is growing so quickly, you're generally going to have like, nine men for every 10 women, which means like systemically, women, even women who follow all the rules aren't finding partners.</p><p>But also in these communities, it's much more likely for a man to marry outside the community than it is for a woman to marry outside the community because within a lot of groups, it's believed that it's easier for a woman to fully convert than a man to fully convert. Ironically Judaism being the one sort of exception here but I could just use it as an example, so whatever.</p><p>So yeah but okay, back, back on topic. So let's talk about the beginnings of, of, of modern slut shaming, right? This wasn't like, this is, this is post contraceptives. Right post abortion. So you're not dealing with the same risk of of, you know, women getting pregnant and then kids becoming the ward of the state.</p><p>[00:14:00] Well, even in this scenario, you actually have a really negative externalities for everyone else in a society if 1 woman decides to sleep around. So,</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> and it's not just the. Potentially orphaned children.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> Yeah. So, you know, if I have a group of let's say 10 men and 10 women, right? A monogamy world, these women are matching to these men, right?</p><p>Like, like based on their aggregate desirability within a social order. Suppose that one of these women or two of these women, let's say two of these women, you know, like 20 percent of society, Actually I'm going to be I'm just going to sleep around. I don't need to marry a guy. I don't need to be long term monogamous with a guy to be with a guy.</p><p>Right. Well, immediately a lot of guys within this community are going to artificially value these women higher than they might otherwise value them. So in a group [00:15:00] of, 10 women, right? These two women, if you want immediate access to sex, these two women will be the highest value women. To pretty much any guy in that group, right?</p><p>Like, even if they're below average, if the other women aren't going out there and being willing to have sex, and, and that is what a guy is interested in, then these women, even if they're like near the bottom two women, they have the highest value. Like, they're sort of playing this arbitrage game. Now, of course, they're degrading their long term value by doing this.</p><p>And, and No, this is a</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> short term game, and that's why it's also like, well, it's so smart.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> It's, it's a short term game, yeah, but it, it is an enormously profitable short term game if you're talking about, like, social status, profitability, attention from men you couldn't otherwise get to pay attention to you, etc.</p><p>Like, there are a lot of short term benefits to doing this for the</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> individual. Yeah, well, and also if you live in a society where having a kid with one of these people, like without their consent, locks them down, it is a way for a very low value woman to ultimately end up with a higher value man [00:16:00] than she could have gotten had she chosen a monogamous</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> strategy.</p><p>Or high value child support. Exactly. Yeah. So this, when, when one of these women starts doing this, it's bad for all of the women who are playing the game faithfully. Right? Like, they have lost a huge chunk of their value, right? The guys who previously they would have wanted, these top tier guys well, they're now sleeping with these other women.</p><p>And they're not gonna pay attention to these women until... Later until they're ready to settle down or whatever and even then these women are offering these men something that's sort of like paywalled That that now these guys can get for free maybe at lower quality, but they can still get it for free If I was to word it differently You know how much of the paywalled porn company gonna make even if it's slightly higher quality porn if there's free porn online Exactly that offering is no longer that high And the men who are sleeping with these girls, let's be clear, these are the top two most attractive men of this group, right?</p><p>If 20 percent of the women are sleeping [00:17:00] around, they're going to be sleeping with the top two men because they are the highest value of the women who are sleeping around. Okay, so, there's, you can think of them almost like union scabs. They sort of break the value proposition that the other women are, are offering.</p><p>Well, then after a bit, you, you begin to get a situation in which all of the other women are benefiting from putting an exogenous, Negative modifier to these women who show this level of sexual improprieties, market value, right, social value, etc. So they will tease, they will attack these women in an attempt to lower their social value.</p><p>So through applying this exogenous motivation there is a cost to doing it for these women. Right, an immediate cost, not a long term cause, but an immediate cost. Because this immediate cost then makes it less, like, beneficial to do this. Like, if we're just speaking about, like, in the moment beneficiality, well, then they'd think, oh, well, [00:18:00] I get called a slut, I get shamed, I get disinvited to parties, everything like that.</p><p>You know, that is a reason to not go out and sleep around within these communities. Now to Simone's comment here, which we also need to talk about, you know, when this was starting, there was also a huge negative long term effect for the women who were doing this, right? Like, if you went out and did this, it was like, Getting a face tattoo, right?</p><p>Like, you had dramatically lowered both your social standing within society and your ability to lock down a long term partner. It was not really worth it, except for women in generally pretty hard up situations. Either hard up economic situations or hard up mental situations. It was just not something that your general, like, upstanding mentally healthy woman was going to do in this historical context.</p><p>But, time goes on. Okay, now you've got a group of women in our society who are these [00:19:00] women who engage in sexual impropriety and have gotten older, right? And they are basically an underclass within society that has a motivation to lower the stigma against women like them. In addition to that, men and, and I know, you know, cause I'm...</p><p>I remember, like, I wanted to promote women being slutty, because I could sleep with those women, right? Like, I was one of the guys arguing, Oh, yeah, you should totally sleep around. Like, that's what I was saying in high school, because I wanted to sleep with them, f*****g obviously, right? So there's, there's two groups that, that is promoting this.</p><p>It's the women who have now entered this sort of new, weird underclass. And then the men who want to sleep with these women, right? And here we mentioned this in the, in the video of how much does Sleeping around actually matter but just for women who are like broadly unaware of this because I think our society kind of hides this and it's something that I don't think it's easy to intuit as a woman biologically, men, a good portion of men, not all men, seem to have [00:20:00] an intrinsic sort of disgust reaction and, and loss of attraction to women who they know have a high body count.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> And I think it's just one of those arousal slash aversion things. People can't control, like you can't control if you're into feet, you can't control if you are into men versus women, and you can't control if it really turns you off that someone's had a lot of sexual partners.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> Okay yeah, yeah, and I, I just think that that's sort of missed for people because our society kind of hides it from you, and if you don't believe me, just go around and ask a bunch of your male friends, and you can just ignore them.</p><p>You can be like, oh, you've been brainwashed by society. But I'm telling you, they happen. Like, it, it, I, it's, it's an intrinsic thing. So, and it's not all guys. Again, I think it's like 60, 70 percent of guys from what I've seen. Anyway, so back to the story at hand. So there was this motivation for slut shaming.</p><p>But, as the [00:21:00] negative externality that people were able to apply through slut shaming lessened over time, because it did lessen over time, as society normalized, you know, I call it serial monogamy, which was basically a form of sleeping around Then more and more people benefited from doing it because the negative external effects were, were not there.</p><p>And so you begin to move from 20 percent to 40%, from 40 percent to, you know, 60%, right? So what then happens when you have let's say 20 percent or 30 percent of women really not sleeping around much and, and then 60, 70 percent sleeping around a lot, right? Or, or open to sleeping around, not like just totally giving it away.</p><p>Well, now you have two categories of slut, right? You have category one of slut, which is the serial monogamy slut. Right. These women are still broadly monogamous, but they are moving between partners fairly quickly. And</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> then they just have a lot of boyfriends and then maybe husbands.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> Yeah. Yeah. And then you have the actual, like sleeping around women who just sort of sleep [00:22:00] with anyone.</p><p>To understand this system. We're first going to talk about the women who are just sort of sleeping around more broadly. Right. So let's assume that they were like 70 percent of these. So seven out of these 10 women were in this group. right? Three of the women were still like, okay, I'm going to save myself, et cetera.</p><p>But then these other women, whatever. Well, who are they going to choose to sleep with? Right, of the men. They're not sleeping with the average men. They're not giving up all of what they are giving up, because they are still giving stuff up, to sleep with average or below average men. They are all sleeping with the same men.</p><p>And because these men are non exclusive, right, it's easy for them to do this. To move from one to the other to the other, right? So, this was a system that really, Not really benefited women when it was only a few women doing this, but it's a system that like benefits women a lot less the more women are participating in it.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Yeah, because then suddenly [00:23:00] your arbitrage opportunity disappears.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> Yeah, yeah, it's a tragedy of the commons issue. Now, okay, let's divide these women into two groups. Some who are still sort of doing the monogamy thing, and some that are being just totally promiscuous. You know, very low barriers to sexual access.</p><p>Well, the ones who are totally promiscuous, they're both hurting the ones who are waiting for marriage, but the one, but not as much, because now those women are like a unique asset, if you get what I mean, right? They are something that no one else can get, and that makes sense for a specific class of guy that's generally not the guys who are out there sleeping around, right?</p><p>The women who they actually hurt the most are the serial monogamy women. Because, now, these women don't really have anything differential over the completely slutty women, right? Like, they've also been with a number of partners. But they're not giving out sex for free. You know, they're out there basically charging for it, whether it's dates or time or anything like that, right?</p><p>And so these other women are even more, like, analogous to just, like, straight up scab breakers. So even as [00:24:00] sexual impropriety is normalized within society, there is still a strong motivation to slut shame these women. Right for a big, a big portion of the population and as we move further and further along as a society now There's new types of slides, right?</p><p>These are women who are doing only fans accounts These are women who are posting stuff online, right?</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Yeah, so not actually sleeping with people</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> just Yeah, but these women are now actually like a lower category of slut you could almost say than the ones who were just sleeping around a lot because now they're hurting those women's ability to exercise what they were previously getting from the market.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Well, and I mean, I think arguably what's interesting about the threat posed by OnlyFans artists is that arguably what women really want from men is resources, not necessarily exclusivity. Yeah. If they had to choose, they might choose resources over [00:25:00] exclusivity. And so you could argue that the OnlyFans women are more of a threat because they will command more in terms of financial resources than, you know, maybe really cheap date.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> Yeah, so does slut shaming make sense in a modern context? I want to hear your intuition. Like, do you think that you personally benefit from it?</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> No, because I don't understand when people are insulting me, so I don't know. But what I will say is I think that shame as a concept is something I'm really, really warming up to.</p><p>Because it is a way to enforce social norms without making a law or a rule. So keep in mind one thing we haven't been discussing here is like, Oh, you know, if you're found sleeping out of wedlock or you're found like, you know, sleeping around as a young woman or even dressing provocatively, like we're going to jail you, we're going to beat you.</p><p>We're going to kill you. You know, it is just, we're going to, we're going to talk about you [00:26:00] behind your back and in front of you and be mean which is way nicer. than being killed or jailed or tortured like physically. Although people can argue that mental rejection, social rejection is more painful than torture.</p><p>So I like it because I think it allows a society to Enforce important social norms without having blanket laws, and I also like it because I think it works uniquely well in a pluralistic society. Because if, for example, like, a super conservative religious person who you don't identify with calls you a slut, you're just like, I don't know, like that.</p><p>You know, that holier than now weird Catholic girl thinks I'm a slut. I don't care because I don't care about her culture. So it also allows for, for cultures to enforce norms on their own people. And even when they try to enforce those norms on outsiders, they're not hurting the outsiders. Only people who care about the in group will be subject to those rules.</p><p>So to me, it seems super [00:27:00] libertarian, super laissez faire. But also, I mean, a lot of these social norms are important to the points you made about societal stability. So I think slut shaming and other forms of shame are really, really wonderful.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> So I might agree. I, I would say, I mean, like, when I think about the culture I would raise my kids in, like, what am I telling them?</p><p>Yeah. And generally, I just don't think it's worth it. When you apply a shame to them. What to shame them about anything. No, for them to shame other people. So, so I'll explain why so if they go out there and they are broadly applying this negative externality of shut slamming to society as a whole, like all of the women in society who are out there doing this.</p><p>Well, now they're hurting those people. I mean, that's what you're doing with a negative externality that now provides motivation for those women, the sluts to apply negative externalities to them to prevent this kind of behavior, i. e. to do things that lower their social standing. And this is what we're beginning to see around slut shaming, right?</p><p>When the sluts rule the world, right? Like they've already taken over. They've [00:28:00] already won in mainstream society. If you go out there and you try to apply negative externalities to them. Those negative externalities actually reflect back onto you at a much higher level because your behavior is a non normative behavior.</p><p>That being the case, I don't think that there's a benefit to our kids doing it. I do think that there's a benefit to them making it known what they're looking for in a partner, and that may be a low body count, and I think loudly signaling that is a valuable thing. But signal it as, I want somebody from one of...</p><p>You know, these deviant cultural groups, right? While affirming the cultural group for living in a lifestyle that you don't... Believe it. Like, I just don't think you're going to be able to change mainstream society or mainstream action through selection.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> What about within our own culture or our</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> own family?</p><p>Yeah, no, within your own culture, I think it makes a lot of sense. That's my whole</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> point is one, any sort of shaming for someone outside your culture is feckless and pointless. [00:29:00] It just makes you look bad. But I</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> think within your culture</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> I just, I think it's, I think it's a really great non coercive way. In fact, I think, you know, if anything, you look kind of lame shaming people outside your culture. Yeah. Because they don't care. And it just makes you look weird. But though it could, you know, to our other conversations about the importantness of othering yourself to kind of keep you within your culture is really important.</p><p>So it could play a good role in that. It makes more</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> of a sense to just really aggressively only shame within your culture and make it clear what your intercultural status hierarchy is going to be based on and that sexual promiscuity. And I hate to say this, do you think, I mean, is there any real negative to sexual promiscuity for men?</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Yes, absolutely. But it comes more, it comes more from the risks of STDs and of potentially getting a woman pregnant, and potentially getting a woman accusing you of misconduct. So no, that's very</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> hot. Yeah. It's extremely risky. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it could hurt somebody's feelings. [00:30:00]</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> You know, if you, if you aren't very socially savvy and you aren't very careful about the way that you engage with people, you could hurt a lot of people.</p><p>We talked about this. All right.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> Delta. You changed my mind on this one. I think you're right. You have convinced me to, to slut shame our sons. Oh, good. Yeah. A little, a little. I still think they need practice more than the girls do. Ugh. But I... You gotta be careful. Yeah, no, I, I do agree with what, what you're saying there.</p><p>But</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> I, I do agree that, especially for men, like, IRL relationship experience is crucial because what are they doing otherwise? They're just watching. Porn online. And that is not a way to learn how relationships work at all. But because it gives people super unrealistic</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> expectations. Important traits like being aggressive, salesmanship.</p><p>No, no,</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> no, no. It's, I agree that it's good. I don't think that young men need to necessarily go all the way. To like, you know, PIV [00:31:00] sex, but whatever</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> you do. Yeah. Maybe there's other ways you could build sort of sexual trophies other than full. Sexual intercourse. What would that look like</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> intimacy? I mean, like, you know, handjobs b******s.</p><p>Like that's, that's fine with me. I mean, it still runs risk of like,</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> hurting all of the risks that you just,</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> no, no, no, no, no, not pregnancy, not pregnancy. And that's a big one. And that to me is like the biggest risk of all, like the idea of being on the hook with child. Like, so that is, that is where I draw the line.</p><p>Also, I feel like the risk of a woman retroactively, you know, having a lot of problems, a lot of women don't count hand jobs, b*******s, et cetera, as sex. So they could still consider themselves virgins. You know, it's, you know, I feel like you, you cross an additional barrier when there is PIV sex involved.</p><p>So, I mean, I'm still saying there's a big risk and like, but if you have to be intimate, be intimate, like people have been intimate when sexual activity has been taboo for the longest time [00:32:00] where they just like do everything but PIV sex, you know, I</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> figure that makes sense. Well, I love you, Simone. This has been a helpful conversation for me and I hope was enjoyable for our audience.</p> <br /><br />This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&#38;utm_campaign=CTA_2">basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe</a>