In Defense of Shame

Even if you didn’t see this past weekend’s Video Music Awards on MTV, you’ve probably heard about pop singer Miley Cyrus’ performance. Mostly, it needs to be seen to be believed. To describe it briefly, Cyrus strips down to a skimpy flesh-colored outfit, uses a foam finger to mimic a sex act, spanks a female back-up singer, before twerking against singer Robin Thicke, and all with a liberal use of tongue (If you don’t know what “twerking” is, 1. I envy you and 2. You don’t want to know). Suffice it to say, Cyrus’ performance has been roundly condemned by viewers as overly sexualized, disgusting, and over-the-top. Commentators as varied as conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh and MSNBC’s Morning Joe team took the time during their shows to criticize the performance. Much of the criticism has centered on the fact that MTV’s Video Music Awards and former Disney Channel star Miley Cyrus are both heavily marketed to teens and preteens.

But not everybody is happy about the criticism of Cyrus. “The knee-jerk approach to shaming Miley Cyrus as a slut is easy, but is it constructive, or even accurate?” asks one entertainment reporter. One Washington Post columnist claimed the reactions “proved that many people in this country are still pre-occupied with slut-shaming.” New York Magazine, meanwhile, claimed that Morning Joe ‘s Mika Brzezinski was “masking her contempt and slut-shaming in faux worry.”

The concept of “slut-shaming” comes up fairly often nowadays, especially on feminist blogs and news sources (a Google search of the term on the feminist site Jezebel yields 1,440 pages). The basic thrust is this: society engages in a sexist and one-sided denunciation of women who openly discuss or celebrate their sexuality. Men meanwhile, get a free pass. Although the basic idea behind the term is nothing new, the phrase itself reached buzzword status around 2010. The most recent and tragic example was the widespread shock and mockery over “Slane Girl” a young Irish girl who was caught on camera performing public sex acts on no less than two men at an Eminem concert. After the girl’s name became public, cyber-bullies drove her to the point where she needed hospitalization.

I agree that our society’s treatment of men and women who engage in sexual activities with a large number of people is grossly unfair. As a young man, I can personally attest to the immense social pressure we face to sleep with as many women as possible, or else we simply aren’t men. Meanwhile, women are told that to be equally sexually promiscuous makes you a whore. It’s a double standard, and a particularly cruel one at that. Many people who call themselves Christians have no problem throwing the first stone when it comes to “slutty” women.

Critics of “slut-shaming” have that much right, but I cannot agree with their ultimate conclusion. It seems to me that there are two possible ways of rectifying this double standard. The one that feminist critics have chosen is to attempt to remove the stigma that surrounds female “sluttiness.” This is perhaps best exemplified by “Slut Walks,” in which women parade in revealing outfits in an effort to reclaim the word “slut” and criticize the victim-blaming of rape victims. But there is also a second way of rectifying the double standard, and that is to hold men to the same standard we hold women to. The same visceral disgust we feel when women act promiscuously should apply just as much to their male partners. Public displays of sexuality like Cyrus’ or Slane Girl’s didn’t occur within a bubble; often they have a male partner who can at least share in some of the blame.

It seems odd that the solution to “slut-shaming” would be to shame more people. After all, isn’t shame a bad thing? But while “slut-shaming” done in such a way as to belittle, alienate, or mock is patently un-Christian, there is great value in shame. As Pope Francis put it recently, “shame is a true Christian virtue… in our country to those who are never ashamed are called ‘sin vergüenza’: this means ‘the unashamed ‘, because they are people who do not have the ability to be ashamed and to be ashamed is a virtue of the humble…” How better to describe young Miley Cyrus than as part a growing trend of “the unashamed?”

Calling out the sins of the world necessarily involves inflicting shame. Sort of like how high school gym coaches instructed us (dubiously) that pain was weakness leaving the body, shame can be likened to ignorance leaving the soul and humility taking its place. Only an unfeeling sociopath could truly realize from the bottom of their heart that they have done wrong and not simultaneously feel shame. In this sense, shame might be again likened to pain. Just as pain is a strong feeling that helpfully informs us when our bodies are broken, shame tells us when our moral judgment is broken. No pain, no gain. No shame, no spiritual gain.

But if shame is akin to pain, how then, to inflict shame on another? If Christians do their jobs well enough, through a loving and compassionate condemnation of sin, shame will naturally arise from internal sources. To paraphrase a famous Jedi Master: dialogue leads to understanding, understanding leads to shame, shame leads to redemption, and redemption leads to God. The bullying of “sluts” doesn’t teach young women to feel ashamed of their actions, but to feel ashamed of themselves as people. The shame that comes from mass exposure and mockery isn’t true shame; it’s a sense of self-loathing, self-hatred, and self-belittlement. This, above all, Christians must condemn.

Too often, however, feminist critics aren’t attacking the mean-spiritedness that comes with “slut-shaming,” but the moral judgments behind them. In other words, the problem isn’t that the “slut-shamers” are demeaning women, but that they hold a moral judgment on sexual behaviors to begin with. One Juicy Ecumenism comment helpfully informed us back in March that Hobby Lobby’s lawsuit against the HHS mandate was all about “slut-shaming.” “This issue isn’t about “Religious Liberty” at all,” they claimed, “It’s about keeping women in their place…”

And this June, ABC News ran a sympathetic news report on a West Virginia high school student who accused her school of inviting a “slut-shaming” speaker. The extent of the speaker’s “slut-shaming” was merely that she was pro-abstinence. “It’s your prerogative who you wanna have sex with,” the student told an ABC reporter, “It’s none of my business.”

By this broad definition, Jesus Christ Himself was “slut-shaming” when He spoke out against divorce or told the woman accused of adultery to “sin no more”. In our desire to account for the feelings of those whose conduct who disagree with, we cannot simultaneously stay silent on what the Bible says about sexuality. To do so would be a grave injustice to those we minister to; it would be robbing them of God’s full message. If and when accusations of “slut-shaming” are used to denounce and ghettoize traditional teachings on sexuality, those accusations must be met with the truth.