The infantilisation of women and gendered nature of moral panic

There’s a British OF girl, I won’t choose to name her, since the post isn’t meant to publicise her content. She has slept with over 100 men in a single day, and there’s probably a documentary about it, of which I only saw one clip on X (I don’t use it much just got active recently to keep up with updates on conflict in Syria).

I’m not here to discuss the morality of what this girl did. Personally speaking, I don’t condone her actions at all. I believe she needs to seek therapy, and is on path of self-destruction by engaging in reckless, dangerous behaviour.

Before even looking at comments on her insta, or the clip on twitter, I had a caricature of the comments section. As anticipated, it resembled what I thought it to be. This isn’t the first time I have observed such phenomenon. It’s been years.

Most of the men were making comments along the line of “imagine her being your daughter.” I believe I have developed a better understanding of this phenomenon, and why a lot of men imagine their daughters, often non-existent ones, to be in the same place as the woman who has committed a moral transgression.

It’s infantilisation. Men escape that, women don’t. That’s why I almost never see a man commenting “imagine being his dad” to news of a man doing anything that could be considered socially or morally reprehensible. A man could commit rape, murder, robbery, and just about anything that is wrong in your books. A handful of men would blame the parents, and particularly the father. The male is simply more likely to be berated directly. A woman on the other hand has her whole family being charged with her wrong, especially her male relatives. In different terms, men take a more individualistic approach when they berate another man, and a more collectivist attitude when criticising women.

Infantilisation of women is not always harmful to them. It often takes away the accountability away from women, and places it on her parents, or male siblings. That way, sometimes a woman can save herself from facing severe repercussions in certain cultures as she’s thought to be a naive, dumb creature susceptible to manipulation.