The Public Stoning of Kristen Stewart

Public stoning anyone?  Please join us on my Facebook timeline as we discuss Nico Lang's HuffPo piece, "Trampire: Why The Public Slut Shaming of Kristen Stewart Matters for Young Women". 

Lang says, "I might not be concerned for K-Stew, but I am concerned for all the young women today who are tuned into this scandal, ones who are learning that it's not okay to screw up, ever. Chris Brown can publicly beat the hell out of his girlfriend but still be played on the radio and win Grammys. However, if you ever cheat on your boyfriend, your life is over and no one will ever want to be associated with you. Almost no one will blame the much-older guy you cheated with, and it might actually make him more famous and help his career. Few will care that he was your boss and in a position of authority or that he may have have taken advantage of your youth and relative inexperience. Everything is your fault, and your life will be threatened over it."

A friend of a friend had this response: "The fact the GOP wants to make all abortion illegal doesn't have much to do with an internet troll calling KS a whore on the comments of GossipHilton.Com. I just can't see them as being related."

The reason an internet troll calling Kristen Stewart a whore is related to the GOP wanting to make all abortion illegal is because they are both about the subjugation of women. "Whore" and "tramp" and now "trampire" are words associated with women, not men. Throughout human history women in many cultures have been blamed much more harshly for making sexual mistakes than men.  Here's a Biblical example from Deuteronomy 22:13-21, New International Version:

¹³ If a man takes a wife and, after sleeping with her, dislikes her ¹⁴ and slanders her and gives her a bad name, saying, “I married this woman, but when I approached her, I did not find proof of her virginity,” ¹⁵ then the young woman’s father and mother shall bring to the town elders at the gate proof that she was a virgin. ¹⁶ Her father will say to the elders, “I gave my daughter in marriage to this man, but he dislikes her. ¹⁷ Now he has slandered her and said, ‘I did not find your daughter to be a virgin.’ But here is the proof of my daughter’s virginity.” Then her parents shall display the cloth before the elders of the town, ¹⁸ and the elders shall take the man and punish him. ¹⁹ They shall fine him a hundred shekels of silver and give them to the young woman’s father, because this man has given an Israelite virgin a bad name. She shall continue to be his wife; he must not divorce her as long as he lives. ²⁰ If, however, the charge is true and no proof of the young woman’s virginity can be found,²¹ she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death. She has done an outrageous thing in Israel by being promiscuous while still in her father’s house. You must purge the evil from among you.

So yeah.  I guess there was no need to prove your son was a virgin when he got married?  Thank God for those rare love-slingers like Jesus who wasn't into the whole casting the first stone thing.  But sadly, we still live in a culture where it's almost assumed that men want to sleep around but women are supposed to suppress those urges. If a woman enjoys fornicating, she's a slut. If a man enjoys fornicating, he's a romeo. 

I'm not condoning marital infidelity at all. People, all people, regardless of their secondary sexual characteristics, make stupid, hurtful choices that ruin relationships and cause pain to too many people. But a public stoning won't make the situation any better.