He's a liar; she's a slut

A friend from college who worked on a campaign commented that when people insult a female candidate, they will just call her a slut. I have recently encountered the question of why people insult women (and only women) by denouncing them as promiscuous, so I've been thinking about it a fair amount.

One explanation for why promiscuity in women is so much more abhorred than promiscuity in men the evolutionary one*. The story is that early humans were mostly serially monogamous, women had children by several partners, and their current partners would help take care of the children. For a woman it was bad if their partner was spending time with another woman, because it meant time that the man was not contributing his resources to taking care of her children. For men it was bad if their partner was promiscuous, because then they would not be able to tell when they were contributing their resources to a child they did not father. This would explain why men are terrified of promiscuous women. But according to this explanation only men should be terrified of promiscuous women, so the use of "slut" as a blanket slur suggests the dominance of male preferences reflected in language.

Here are some reasons why people need to stop throwing around the term "slut:"

1. The use of such a primitive slur against a political candidate suggests they are not taking women seriously. "Slut" is far from a substantive denunciation: a politically inclined person would be embarrassed to put down a male candidate solely by calling him a "prick" or "asshole."
2. Using the term "slut" as a blanket insult perpetuates the limitation on female sexual freedom. There is not such a stigma around promiscuous men that people insult men by calling them promiscuous.
   
3. Even if men are inclined to fear promiscuity in women, this does not mean men are justified in calling women sluts. Men are also naturally inclined to go around naked when it is sufficiently warm, urinate in public, fight other men to the death etc. Last I checked, these behaviors were illegal and not socially acceptable. Fortunately humans are cultured animals; we should take advantage of this quality. Also, many "natural" inclinations are maladaptive with respect to our society and people should just get over them--for instance, xenophobia.
   

* I don't have a citation for this; I heard this by word of mouth by I trust the sources. I am also often skeptical of these evolutionary fables because they are often highly biased by what people want to believe.