Shaming Mistresses

A reader writes about a banner put up by an Argentinian wife whose husband had an affair with a woman named Eliana.

So making its rounds as the meme-of-the-day all over twitter/the Internet, about two weeks ago, was this photo of a banner that a scorned woman posted on the street near her house, in a city in Argentina (where I live):

Translated, it means: “Eliana Dora Duek: You enjoyed fucking my husband – and he gave it to you in the ass! Veronica”

Here’s what I don’t understand: why did the scorned woman Veronica *want to publicize to everyone in her neighborhood* that her husband was cheating on her?. What is Veronica thinking, and what is she trying to achieve? And what’s the significance/importance of the “ass” detail?

Women are born with a martyr mentality brain module that guides their every thought process. Thus, when a wife suffers infidelity she does not think that advertising this fact will redound negatively to her. She can announce to the world that her husband cheated on her with a mistress who let him do her in the ass, and the wife won’t ever feel like this embarrasses her in any way. Quite the opposite; she will win allies and supporters to her side.

But a man advertising the fact that his wife made a cuckold of him will win no allies and supporters. People won’t rally around him and give him group hugs to lift his spirits while calling the wife an ungrateful whore. Instead, most people will feel pity for him and want to get far away from his problems.

Why the difference? *Women are reproductively more valuable than men*. People, men and women, are wired to rush to the defense of a scorned woman more readily. It is in the nature of both sexes to immediately assume the worst about the man and the best about the woman in any domestic dispute. A scorned wife? Poor dear. He’s a pig and a lout. A scorned husband? I heard they were having trouble.

So a wife who publicizes her husband’s affair can expect more social benefit from it. She has not lowered her sexual market value by admitting to being the victim of infidelity because women’s SMV is almost entirely wrapped up in their looks. On the contrary, a man who publicizes his wife’s affair HAS lowered his sexual market value, because a man is judged on conditional status-based metrics, one of which is his ability to keep a woman happy and loyal. It’s preselection in reverse: the unfaithful wife has *deselected* the duped husband.

I predict, then, that you will see a lot more of these public shaming tactics from women against their cheating men then you will from men against their cheating women. And I base this on a simple grasp of evolutionary psychology fundamentals. (There’s a reason “Don’t Date Him Girl!” is a popular website without an equivalently popular “Don’t Date Her Man!” site.)

Interestingly, the wife also gets some benefit from outing the mistress. By naming her and describing her actions in lurid detail, she is tarred with the implied slut brush. Women will sneer at her wanton ways, and men will want to seek her out for sex (but not for commitment! Which would be a victory for the spurned wife.) It takes two to tango, and all that, and wives are not blind to the threat that younger, hotter, tighter competition poses to their marriages. The ass detail was simply embroidery to maximize the slut smear.

If I were friends with this wife, I would tell her that she might have avoided all these problems if she let her husband spelunk the stool cavern. Anal love is the balm that binds.