Slut shaming is never, ever OK

Slut shaming … I can’t even believe this is still a thing but pathetically, sadly, terribly, there are men out there who still think this is OK.

I joined eHarmony, against by better judgement and swallowed hard on the little bit of vomit in my mouth. It is not turning out to be the answer to my dating woes but a database for the desperate, the dateless, the misogynist, the need a wifers and now, it seems, the slut shamers.

I was talking to a guy, half Scottish, half Swedish but living in Australia for many years. Aged 39, never married, no kids. I do understand that part now.

He asked me if I had “been with many men since my divorce”.

I responded that I got divorced in January 2018 so yes, I had dated men in the time since. I said there had been a couple of short-term relationships, the longest being eight months.

He then asked if he could say something but asked me not to take it to heart. This is what he said:

“Too many men means too many dicks (sorry!) inside a woman is not good .. for (from a man point of view) a woman who takes her pants off to many can carry on doing it – slutty in other words – so sorry, terrible but true”.

How is this acceptable today? How the fuck can we still be dealing with this kind of misogyny, this disgraceful double standard where men can fuck and fuck and women are expected to be some kind born-again virgin? Oh, and this man didn’t even believe in marriage. He said he didn’t agree with it, so it’s not even some kind of religious prerogative for sex as a sacred thing in a marital bed.

The kicker of all this is I didn’t even say I had slept with many men. I didn’t say I wrote about sex on a blog. I didn’t tell him how many partners I’ve had or how many I’ve dated. All I said was that I had dated since my divorce and had a few short-term relationships. In a three-year period, how is that a terrible thing? How did he deduce slut from that?

I am enraged.