Preventing dishonoring (fictional article)

[Learning to undeny]

The following paper is based on a ficticious society that shames a woman and her family when she engages in premarital sex or adultery. Unfortunately, this 'honor culture' has been common throughout history and still exists, for example in the Middle East.

One recent paper has helped me better understand this honor culture, particularly when it reaches the extreme form of honor killings. Sometimes divorce, flirtation, or even baseless gossip, can be enough to trigger such killings. Men can also be victims, in limited amounts.

The society considered below has evolved differently. A novel approach at preventing dishonor is being implemented.


Long-term effects of dishonor in Spolivskoan women.

Abstract.
Dishonor is defined as any sexual act that involves a woman and a man she is not married with. Previous research has shown the negative effects that dishonor brings to the woman's family. Following the current trend in research, we will refer to the woman as the victim of dishonor and to the man as the perpetrator of the act of dishonor. By doing so, we aim to dismantle the existing narrative whereby the woman is considered to be the one that "brings" dishonor to her family, while the perpetrator may get no punishment.

This novel paradigm has already shown success in profiling the perpetrator of an act of dishonor. On average, he is a man 3.4 years older than the victim, and with a significantly higher chance of having pathological extra-marital attraction (PEMA) than the general population. PEMA is defined as a pattern of sexual fantasies, urges and behaviours involving a person outside of one's marriage.

In this paper, we consider for the first time the psychological effects of dishonor on the victim, something that the new paradigm called for. We have found that victims of dishonor in a curated sample of rural Spolivskoan women are at higher risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder, mood disorders, anxiety disorders and premature death than controls. Our most unexpected result is that women who have been victims of dishonor are at higher risk of developing PEMA.

We hope that our study brings awareness of the damage that dishonor causes on the victims and helps dispell the attitudes that downplay importance of extra-marital or pre-marital affairs. Future research, we believe, must sharpen the focus on the prevention of such acts.

Methodology.
An undercover researcher infiltrated the gossip communities in 23 villages across 4 different regions of Spolivsko. Whenever the researcher overheard anything about a woman having brought dishonor to her family, the researcher contacted the victim after asking the gossips for her personal information. Then, the researcher asked the victim to participate in the study. Out of the 52 women that were reached out by the researcher, 9 of them did not agree to participate in the research, leaving n=43 participants. A random cousin of each woman was chosen as a control, 3 of whom did not agree to participate in the research, leaving n=40 controls.

31 women from the victim sample were married, 10 were not married and 2 were divorced. 29 women from the control sample were married and 11 were not married. The median ages were 25 for the victims and 27 for the controls.

Each participant had to answer a general mental health questionnaire, as well as specific inventories on PTSD and sexual disorders.

A year later, the participants were interviewed again with the same questions, in order to distinguish short-term from long-term psychological damage. 5 of the participants from the victim group had died in the period between the interviews, leaving n=38 participants in that group. No participants from the control group had died during that period. No living participant declined to participate in the follow-up.

Results.
In the first interview, participants from the victim group showed a greater amount of general psychological distress than the control group (p < 0.05). Specifically, victims were slightly more depressed, and had much more symptoms of generalised anxiety disorder than controls. Victims also reported slightly more substance abuse.

9 victims, as opposed to 1 control, met the criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a significant difference (p < 0.05). Our explanation, in accordance with the modern framework, is that the perpetrator deceives the victim into interpreting the act of dishonor as consensual, neglecting the shame that the act causes on her. When the victim finds out that her life will never be the same because of the dishonor brought by the perpetrator, she is likely to develop trauma.

Victims were no more likely than controls to suffer from sexual disorders in general (p > 0.05). However, and rather surprisingly, a strong, significant (p < 0.05) association was found with pathological extra-marital attraction (PEMA). This suggests a theory of "contagion" for PEMA, although more research is needed to establish a causal connection.

In the follow-up, one year later, 5 participants from the victim group had died, 4 of whom experienced 'very high' or 'extreme' levels of psychological distress during the first interview. 2 of the deaths were by suicide, 2 others were 'honour killings' perpetrated by a sibling and 1 was due to a hunting accident.

The remaining 38 victims still experienced a significantly heightened level of general distress when compared to controls. In fact, their level of distress had increased, albeit in a non-significant way (p=0.13). Individually, distress levels went up for 26 of the living victims, it stayed the same for 3 of the living victims, and it went down for the remaining 9 of them. Controls did not experience a significant change in levels of distress.

PTSD symptoms did not differ significantly in the follow-up. 3 of the PTSD sufferers from the victim sample had died, but 2 new cases emerged.

PEMA was not particularly high among the deceased, and the number of victims who met the criteria for PEMA had fallen in the period between the interviews, making the association significant but weak. This suggests that PEMA fades over time when untreated, which is an intriguing open door for research that might help prevent dishonor.

Conclusions.
Victims of dishonor exhibited greater amounts of distress than controls, including symptoms of depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The associations did not diminish in a follow-up a year later.

Victims also experienced higher amounts of pathological extra-marital attraction (PEMA) than controls, although the association faded over time. This result has implications for research and policing in preventing acts of dishonor.

5 of the victims from the original sample had died in the year after the first interview, which raises ethical concerns for future research.

One caveat of our research are the small samples and poor choice of controls. Future research should attempt to predict acts of dishonor before they take place. On the other hand, we have tested a state-of-the-art method of recruiting subjects via infiltrating gossip communities.

The unfortunate deaths and distress showcase that pre-marital sex and adultery are not to be taken lightly. It is of uttermost importance to educate the public on the severe consequences of such acts so that they stop taking place. This paper is our modest contribution to that goal.

We envision a society where young women are constantly reminded of the risks of dishonor so that they are not so easily decieved by the perpetrators of acts of dishonor. In order for this to be possible, the narrative must change. It is perpetrators, not victims, who bring shame to the family. Shame and punitive consequences towards perpetrators must increase in order to be able to prevent dishonor. This is only possible if the victims speak up when they are dishonored, breaking the cycle of silence.


While the paper above is satirical, a couple of points are noteworthy.

First, if the discoveries in Aksoy & Szekely (2025) above are true, then fostering the honor culture might actually reduce honor killings in places where the honor culture is already strong. However, this is only at the expense of women's liberties. There are alternative methods to reduce honor killings, such as the legislation passed in Turkey in 2012, which increased sentences for perpetrators of honor murders. The aim is to eliminate honor culture, and not only its most extreme presentation. The final objective is not to prevent pre-marital sex and adultery, but to strip them of their significance.

Second, where honor culture is a thing, it is the responsibility of both partners to avoid the severe repercussions of socially punishable acts. Not always are they aware of the gravity, though.