A ‘Cad’ does not sell videos of his sexual conquests to newspapers

There’s been a lot of talk on this website recently about ‘revenge porn’. First, Freddy revealed his tips on how to avoid embarrassing videos and pictures of yourself being posted online (Answer: don’t let anyone take them). Then Lara asked why a Ukip-supporting victim of revenge porn wasn’t getting any support from feminist campaigners. And now Ed West has come up with his solution for slut-shaming: cad-shaming.

It’s this last bit that I’m not so sure about, though. How come men get the name ‘cad’, while women get called ‘sluts’? When it comes to venomous insults, the two words are hardly on the same level. For example, there are certain words that are automatically banned from the Disqus comment service used on this site and many others. Slut is one of those. Cad, on the other hand, isn’t. No surprises there.

In fact, just last week a Telegraph blogger wrote about why he’d rather be a cad than a gentleman.