It was appropriate. UJS, linked to the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB) — basically a branch of the dominant party in the country, the Workers’ Party (PT) — hasn’t been the most consistent organization when it comes to the defense of the rights and freedoms of women. That’s understandable when we take into account that sometimes their need of defending the government and the status quo come before any other considerations.

Nonetheless, they did show up and they exchanged pamphlets with us. Our libertarian group, Coletivo Nabuco, distributed pamphlets with the essay “Seduzidas e desonradas” (“Seduced and dishonored”), by Brazilian anarchist individualist and feminist Maria Lacerda de Moura. UJS’s had an article against the World Cup and ended with an appeal, probably to appease the feminist crowd present, “For more women in spaces of power!”

They printed the same slogan on their largest banner. When we went to talk to the people who were in the walk, we immediately inverted it: “For less spaces of power to oppress women!”

UJS’s slogan betrays a misconception about what characterizes the fight for female emancipation. According to it, women’s issues are little more than representation problems, which can be alleviated with the presence of a higher percentage of women in the state and its decision-making instances. It’s as if we should allot quotas to each group in society: if women are 50% of the population, they should make up 50% of government.

It’s also an idea that keeps intact all the power structures in society that guarantee that women continue to be oppressed. Not only by the iron fist of the state, but also by the dominant patriarchal culture — which dictates which behaviors, clothes, jobs, studies, hobbies, gestures, and sexual activities are appropriate to women.

Representation in government is not a proxy for real and significant political authority. An analogy with racism can make this problem clearer. Around 7.6% of the Brazilian population is black. If government destined 7.6% of its offices to black people, what would change in their political situation? Little. The very number of people who describe themselves as blacks in demographic surveys is artificially low because of the racist culture in which we’re inserted. Proportional representation in the state, thus, doesn’t solve the bigger problem — racism (as well as sexism) feeds back into the power structure the state is a part of.

For the same reasons, reserving of placement quotas for black students in public universities means very little, for public universities themselves are excluding spaces that are unable to respond to the needs of the black population. They can only ever serve the needs of a small (and generally already privileged) minority, so a “progressive” ethnic composition of students doesn’t break the system of privilege. It’s just makeup.

Thus, we don’t need representation in spaces of power, because power is inexorably force and oppression. The power structure we have nowadays is sustained by the intersectional oppression of several minorities (affecting them differently in kind, if not in intensity), combined with the systematic oppression, though less manifested, of the people as a whole.

Women in power should be seen not as forces of change, but as results of change. Social and cultural changes open the doors of previously closed off spaces to women, but their representation in power shouldn’t be conflated with empowerment.

We don’t need more diversity in power, we need less power.

Oppression is the raison d’être of power. It doesn’t matter what its gender composition is.

The researchers focused on jobs in Utah with median yearly earnings below $40,000 (the state’s average) so as to exclude doctors, lawyers, financial professionals, accountants and other specialized professions that are universally licensed. As Economics 21 explains:

The authors then determined the primary gender of those who worked in the thirteen occupations that fell in this category. Their results are clear— in Utah. Approximately 70 percent of the people who needed licenses to work in these professions were women. Of the 13 occupations examined, 9 licensed more women than men and 6 were over 80 percent female. These occupations included dietitians (98 percent female), court reporters (80 percent), cosmetologists (94 percent), and estheticians (96 percent), to name a few.

Similar results can be seen in public interest law firm Institute for Justice’s state-by-state rankings of licensing requirements. The firm regularly fights on behalf of women whose livelihoods are endangered by regulators. For example, even though African hair braiding involves zero dangerous chemicals or implements, Dr. JoAnne Cornwell faced losing her business, Sisterlocks, because she hadn’t spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours learning irrelevant, outdated techniques. The truth is Cornwell had developed a new method of braiding which threatened existing businesses. IJ was successful in striking down the arbitrary, cronyist legislation.

According to IJ, the profession with the most onerous licensing requirements out of all the low- and moderate-skill professions is interior design, an overwhelming female field. To design interiors in Nevada, Louisiana, Florida, or the District of Columbia costs $364 and an average of six years of required experience. But it’s hard to understand how ugly rooms threaten public safety.

Right now IJ is fighting for Trisha Eck’s right to allow her customers to use her teeth whitener in her office, though a board of Georgia dentists wants to shut her business down. And in Arizona, Celeste Kelly and IJ are fighting for her right to operate her animal massage business.

There’s abundant evidence that attempts to mandate equal pay can actually hurt women. Legislation always carries with it unintended consequences, no matter how well-intentioned.

The truth is neither side has it right. The left says the gender wage gap results from discrimination. The evidence for this is shaky at best. The right says the gender wage gap can be chalked up to women’s choices. But this doesn’t take into account how government-mandated barriers such as the high cost of child care and occupational licensing laws influence those choices.

Who knows what choices women might make if they were allowed to work without needing permission slips from, essentially, their competitors? There can be no doubt that up-front costs of thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours to even get started in a profession effectively thwarts many women’s career hopes and dreams. By ignoring the problem of women’s underutilization in the work force, or trying to fix it with overbroad, blunt legislation, we miss opportunities to fight to simply government out of the way so women can succeed.

Among other objections, Skwire and Horwitz contend that Borowski “slut shames women who engage in casual sex.”  Woods seems confused by this and writes, “Shows how sheltered I am: evidently there are people in the world who use the phrase ‘slut shames.'”  He then sarcastically dismisses the idea that casual sex is a legitimate choice made by women.

Now, I’m one of the “people in the world who use the phrase ‘slut shames.'”  And since the concept is apparently totally foreign to Dr. Woods, I hope I can explain to him why I think libertarians ought to oppose slut shaming. Slut shaming is the denigration of women as unacceptably sexual, often perpetuated using epithets like “slut” and “whore.”  While it is typically associated with shaming women for activities like casual sex, women can be slut shamed for practically anything. Dressing a particular way, having large breasts, flirting, rebuking sexual advances, being bisexual, and more can all be used as the impetus for slut shaming. Any woman can be slut shamed and there is no concrete definition of a “slut,” leading some feminists to argue that it is more accurate to simply refer to slut shaming as “woman hating.”

But whatever we call it, slut shaming can have dire consequences.  It certainly did for Hope Witsell. After this 13-year-old girl sent a topless photo to a boy she had a crush on, she faced persistent slut-shaming and harassment from her peers. While school administrators did little to stop this harassment, they did see fit to suspend her for sending the photo. Hope eventually committed suicide. And she’s not alone. Felicia Garcia, Jessica Laney, and Amanda Todd are a few other teenage girls who have committed suicide in response to persistent slut shaming.

The tragic impacts of slut shaming can also be seen in many rape cases. Women who are deemed “sluts” are treated as no longer credible witnesses, because if they want sex or have lots of it, it is apparently inconceivable that they might ever not consent to it.  This form of slut shaming was seen in a 2010 gang rape case that was dismissed when it was revealed that the victim had fantasized about group sex. The judge said of the victim, “her credibility was shot to pieces.”  In a 2008 sexual battery case in Georgia, the judge made the victim reveal a litany of intimate details about her sex and dating history. This was used to slut shame and humiliate the victim.

Slut shaming is even wielded against the youngest rape victims. When the New York Times covered of a case in which an 11 year old was gang raped, the paper of record saw fit to focus on the girl’s makeup and clothing. Later in the same case, defense attorney Steve Taylor blamed this 11 year old girl for being gang raped, comparing her to a spider luring men into her web.

And these are just the stories we can read about in the news. But there are likely plenty more instances of rape survivors being slut shamed that we will never read news stories about. After all, 54% of rapes and sexual assaults are never reported to the police, according to data from the National Crime Victimization Survey. This under-reporting can be understood as partially a response to a culture that slut shames and degrades rape survivors who come forward. YouTube user chescaleigh recently posted a video about her experiences with slut shaming after her rape. She provides a powerful look at how rape survivors are slut shamed in the cases that never make it into news media.

And this is why slut shaming ought to be opposed by libertarians. Woods writes that, “The core libertarian value is nonaggression.” I hope we can all agree that rape and sexual assault are clear acts of aggression. Slut shaming and victim blaming are cultural practices that make the victims of this aggression suffer more, all while helping the perpetrators of aggression escape accountability. We should vigorously oppose slut shaming and victim blaming in the same way we should oppose any excuses offered for state violence.

That reminds me: Slut shaming also functions as an excuse for state violence. In particular, it relates closely to the state’s persistent use of violence against sex workers. A recent Human Rights Watch report examined four major US cities where cops will use a woman’s possession of condoms as evidence that she is a sex worker. Because apparently, in the slut shaming minds of police, being prepared to practice safe sex means you’re a prostitute. And apparently being a prostitute means you can be “legitimately” targeted for state aggression. In addition to the usual statist practices of kidnapping people at gun point and locking them in cages, the report also found that police sexually assaulted suspected sex workers. Transgender women were regularly profiled as sex workers, showing how gender stereotypes structure state violence.

Now, none of this necessarily proves that Borowski was in the wrong, as her video did not contain the kind of overtly destructive slut shaming discussed here. Indeed, all she said was that media promotes casual sex and that casual sex is not empowering. It could be argued that Borowski was just making a point that many feminist media critics have also made. However, Borowski made her point in a way that easily could also be seen as denigrating women who choose casual sex and makeup, thus furthering a cultural climate of slut shaming.

But this is not an issue that can simply be dismissed as irrelevant, minor, or “just a joke.” Studies have shown a relationship between sexist humor and sexist attitudes or actions. Casual slut shaming preserves the social environment that makes more severe forms of slut shaming powerful.

Think what you will about Julie Borowski’s video. Whether she promoted slut shaming in it is debatable. But I believe libertarians should conclude that slut shaming, and the social environment it creates, are worth opposing. Because we care deeply about aggression, we should seek a world where aggressors are held accountable and the victims of aggression are not shamed and degraded. Slut shaming stands directly in the way of such a world.

Moreover, as a libertarian I favor human dignity. Slut shaming is a real threat to human dignity. For many teen girls, it means relentless and vicious harassment in public school halls, largely unimpeded by school administrators, who are more likely to punish the victims for their sexuality. As we have seen, this can end in suicide. For rape victims, slut shaming means a shifting of blame. It means their sexual history, their fantasies, and their appearance are all turned into weapons to degrade them when they are already wounded by sexual violence. And for those targeted by police, slut shaming can mean that they will be kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and locked in a cage all under the cover of law. It can even mean that their attempts to practice safe sex become used as evidence to legally justify caging and abusing them. This is what a slut shaming culture looks like. Libertarians must join with feminists to stop it.