There’s a lot of shaming that goes on on this sub. Our resident religious tradcels love to tell us we should be shaming women into remaining virgins and marrying men they aren’t attracted to. Our resident MGTOW in chief loves to tell us we should be shaming men into being less thirsty. Just in general, there’s a misguided belief here that shaming people will lead to the change we want to see.

Horseshit. If shaming worked to change behaviors we’d have zero problems in this world. I could write you a thesis on the decades and decades of public health evidence proving that shaming people does not change behaviors. What does work is incentivizing the change you want to see. I’m far more likely to perform well academically if my parents praise me for getting an A than if they tell me I’m stupid and worthless for getting a D.

I know many of you like to think that religious shaming kept people on the sexual straight and narrow. Also horseshit. Religion never stopped any of this behavior, it just made people hide it. Why do you think the number of shotgun weddings, “premature” births and orphanages dropped dramatically after the sexual revolution? Not a coincidence. Why are teen pregnancy rates lower in places that provide ample access to birth control versus places where abstinence only education is pushed? Also not a coincidence.

I suspect the shame cheerleaders know this but they do it anyway because it makes them feel good to shame people doing things they don’t like.

CMV.