How Deep-Rooted Sexual Shame Cripples Connection & Creates Conflict | (#057) Beyond Success: Psychology & Philosophy for Achievers, with David Tian, Ph.D.

For years, critics have pointed to old pickup-artist terms like “shit tests” and “bitch shields” as proof of misogyny, and they’re right to recoil at them, but here’s the twist—the real problem with those terms isn’t that they’re offensive. It’s that they don’t actually exist. So, today I want to ask a question that cuts to the heart of philosophy itself. When we’re evaluating an idea, what matters more, whether it offends us or whether it’s actually true?

Now, I’m not here to defend pickup artistry and I’m not here to join the chorus of moral panic either. What I’m interested in is truth, because if we cling to false concepts, whether they come from men desperate to figure out dating or from academics rushing to condemn them, we all lose. [00:56.2]

The terms “shit test” and “bitch shield” came out of an era when men were trying to make sense of women’s reactions, a woman pulls back or she questions your confidence, or she doesn’t respond warmly to your approach, and the theory was “She’s testing you,” or worse, “She’s blocking you with some kind of shield.”

It sounds like a video game. Beat the test. Crack the shield. Win the prize. But here’s the thing, women aren’t plotting elaborate tests. They’re not building shields out of spite. They’re protecting themselves. They’ve had to filter through centuries of men who pretended to be one thing while wanting another. What looks like a test is often a defense. What looks like a shield is a part of her saying, “Show me if you’re real.” So, the real question isn’t whether these terms are offensive. The better question is, are they accurate? And if they’re not, what’s a better way to understand what’s happening in those moments? That’s where we’re headed in this episode.

I’m David Tian, a Brown University–certified leadership coach and a certified IFS therapy practitioner. For almost the past two decades, I’ve been helping hundreds of thousands of people from over 87 countries find success, meaning and fulfillment in their personal and professional lives. [02:02.5]

Two decades ago, in the old pickup manuals, books by Erik von Markovik and Neil Strauss and many others, you’ll find two terms that became central dogma, shit tests and bitch shields. The theory was this. When a woman rolls her eyes or makes a sarcastic comment at you, or pushes back it’s something you said, she’s supposedly giving you a shit test. She’s testing your strength. The advice, what you’re supposed to do about that, was to not take it personally, but don’t ignore it either, so nag her back, lower her self-esteem, and then she’ll respect you more.

Then there’s the bitch shield. According to the same gospel, when a woman acts cold, disinterested or even dismissive, it’s not because she actually doesn’t like you, it’s because she’s putting up a fake wall, a shield. Your job, so they said, is to break through that wall with persistence, wit and sometimes sheer stubbornness. [02:59.8]

So, the script was simple. She rolls her eyes? That’s a shit test. Fire back with an egg. She acts aloof? That’s a bitch shield. Stay persistent until she lets you in. The entire model reduces her to an opponent, and the interaction to a contest, a combat. If you pass her test, you win, but if you fail, you lose.

For several years, I bought into all of these lessons. I tried them out. I studied them, practiced them, experimented with them. I even taught them for a little while, and at the time, they seemed like useful maps for navigating the chaos of attraction. But over time, as I got to know women better and men better, not in theory, but in practice, through deep relationships, through psychotherapy training, through the kindness of women who are willing to be vulnerable and honest with me, I began to realize something much deeper. These so-called shit tests and bitch shields don’t actually exist, or to put it more carefully, they exist only in the mind of the man who chooses to see them that way. [04:00.3]

From the woman’s perspective, they’re not tests or shields at all. What looks like a shit test is just a natural reaction. Maybe she’s tired. Maybe she’s nervous. Maybe she’s not sure what to make of you yet. What looks like a bitch shield might be nothing more than her protecting herself from yet another guy who seems insincere. Labeling her reactions as tests or shields says more about your fear than about her intent. It’s a lens of insecurity.

The cruel irony is that men who interpret interactions through these frames end up making it harder for themselves, because the moment you assume she’s testing you, you’re already defensive. You’ve stepped into combat mode. You’re not connecting with her as a human being anymore. Instead, you’re sparring with her, bracing for attacks. They may not even exist. [04:53.4]

It’s the same when you assume she’s putting up a shield. You immediately think, “I have to break this down. I have to get past her defenses,” and the moment you start thinking that way, you’re already setting up the interaction as adversarial, “me vs. her,” and that’s not intimacy. That’s a siege. When you enter a conversation primed for battle, everything she does looks like part of the war. A pause becomes resistance. A joke becomes a test. A cold glance becomes a shield. You project your fear and insecurity onto her, and then you wonder why she doesn’t feel drawn to you.

So, the truth is, this old model of shit tests and bitch shields trains men to approach women as obstacles to overcome. It casts her as the gatekeeper and him as the infiltrator, and that frame poisons the whole interaction from the start. I know this from experience. [05:47.8]

So, before we go any further, I want to be clear when we talk about shit tests and bitch shields, what we’re really talking about is a distorted lens, a lens rooted in insecurity, a lens that makes you less attractive, not more, because women don’t need another man trying to beat them at a game they were never playing in the first place. What they want is someone who can meet them as they are without over-interpreting their every word or gesture and framing it into combat. That’s what’s required for true connection.

So, remember, women aren’t sitting around scheming elaborate tests or plotting shields. They’re responding to lived experiences, not imagined battle plans from the moment they grew breasts, many attractive women have been dealing with unwanted attention. They’ve had to fend off insincere advances, sift through men who hide their intentions, and brace themselves against the sting of disappointment. That’s not a game. This is like survival.

To put it bluntly, she is not actually testing you. She’s protecting herself from being played by yet another guy who says one thing and then does another. When you frame her reaction as a shit test, you’re not seeing her reality. You’re projecting your own insecurity. When you call her aloofness a bitch shield, you’re reducing her humanity to a prop in your own story. [07:09.8]

Both terms collapse the richness of her inner life into a cheap stereotype, like an NPC in a video game. On one side, she becomes the manipulative game player, tossing out obstacles just to watch you squirm, and on the other, she’s cast as the cold hearted gatekeeper, standing in your way for no reason but malice. Neither of these caricatures reflects actual psychology.

Women aren’t archetypal villains in a dating video game. They’re individuals with fears, defenses, hopes, and long histories of being let down. To reduce all that to a test or a shield is to strip away their individual complexity, and, tragically, when men buy into these myths, they make it harder on themselves, because the moment you see a woman as an adversary, you set the stage for combat instead of true, authentic connection. You’re no longer meeting her as a person. You’re squaring off against some fantasy, and that fantasy keeps you from the very intimacy you’re chasing. [08:15.2]

So, if we drop the myths of shit tests and bitch shields, what’s a more accurate framework, a more accurate picture, one grounded in psychology and not in adversarial fantasy? Women have learned, consciously and unconsciously, to filter out insincerity from a young age, from a creepy uncle, from that guy in the street. They have had to when, for centuries, men have said one thing and meant another, when promises of affection too often turned into betrayal. These defenses became necessary. These aren’t schemes. They’re protective dynamics.

In psychotherapy, we have a language for this. In IFS, Internal Family Systems therapy, we talk about protective parts. These parts of us step in when vulnerability feels unsafe. These parts of us create strategies to guard against pain. What pickup artists call a shit test is often nothing more than a protective part saying, “Are you safe? Are you real? Or are you just another man, pretending?” [09:16.8]

Take the woman who laughs at a compliment that you just gave. On the surface, it looks like she’s dismissive. But what could be happening on the inside? Maybe it’s because that compliment touches a raw place and receiving it would mean letting down her guard, and that’s too risky for her. Vulnerability can feel like opening the gates to disappointment, so instead, she laughs at it. That’s not a game. That’s a defense against potential pain.

Or think of the woman who comes across as aloof. The PUA manuals would say that’s a shield, but aloofness isn’t a shield that she crafted to torment men. Maybe it’s a part of her that has learned that showing interest too soon gets exploited or opening up too quickly gets punished, so that part of her pulls her back. It creates space. It protects her. [10:08.2]

If you’re a man interpreting these behaviors as merely tests or shields, you’re missing what’s really happening? You’re fighting a phantom. Instead of connecting with her as a human being, carrying defenses shaped by lived experience, you’re sparring with your own projection, and that keeps you from the very intimacy you’re hoping for. This is Defense Psychology 101. People develop defenses to manage shame, to manage rejection, to manage trauma. Sexual shame in particular is very powerful.

From childhood onward, most of us are told in direct and indirect ways that sex is somehow dirty or dangerous or shameful, and women carry the added weight of being judged for desire, judged for saying yes and judged for saying no. Under those conditions, of course, protective strategies will obviously form naturally. [11:03.8]

For men, though, these protective responses can feel personal. A woman laughs off your compliment and you feel dismissed, or she acts aloof and you feel attacked. If you’re already carrying your own shame, your own fear of rejection, you’ll interpret her behavior as an obstacle, and that’s when you label it as a test or a shield. You translate her defense into combat, because you’re already in combat with yourself.

Let me pause and say this clearly. The myths of shit tests and bitch shields don’t reveal that much about women. They reveal the insecurities of the men who use those terms. They’re not descriptive. They’re projective. [11:44.8]

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Now, if we take this psychoanalytic lens seriously, the entire dynamic changes, right? A defense isn’t something to attack. It’s something to understand. When a woman pulls back, when she pushes against your words, when she acts distanced, that’s not a puzzle to solve. That’s an invitation to patience, to understanding, to seeing her protective parts at work. [13:04.8]

What’s ironic is that the more you fight her defenses, the stronger they get. The more you treat them as shields to break through, the more she needs them to keep them up. But if you meet them with calmness and confidence, if you don’t react with hostility or insecurity, the defenses that you see will soften, because these protective parts in her will see that you’re not trying to exploit them.

So, what’s the lesson here? If you’re a man navigating dating, the key isn’t to learn tricks for beating tests. The key is to learn how to sit with her defensive parts without panic, without hostility, without turning them into enemies. That’s an emotional skill. If you’re a liberal academic studying human interaction, the takeaway is also simple. These PUA terms are symptoms of male insecurity. The accurate framework is defense psychology, plain and simple. [13:59.5]

Attraction, intimacy, connection, these grow not when you break through shields or pass tests, but when you meet another human being’s defensive parts with curiosity and understanding, and that begins with recognizing them for what they are, protective parts, not enemies in a contest.

So, why does this whole topic, this conversation, trigger so much outrage? Why, when we bring up terms like shit tests or bitch shields, do so many people react not with calm argument, but with panic and moral outrage? The answer isn’t that they thought through these concepts carefully. The answer is shame. Sexual shame.

Just a couple of episodes back, I dedicated an entire episode to the topic of sexual shame. Sexual shame cuts deep. Shame is one of the most primitive and painful emotions. It hijacks reason, and when shame gets touched, people don’t pause to analyze. They get triggered. They lash out. That shame isn’t born in a vacuum. It has cultural roots that go back millennia. [15:07.3]

We inherit the old codes of moral purity, rules meant to control sexuality, especially women’s sexuality. These are the vestiges of old-time religion, of laws and customs from societies that feared desire because they couldn’t control it. Those codes didn’t just disappear. They got buried, woven into modern culture. They resurface in slut shaming, in gossip, in the way older men and even older women police younger women’s sexual expression. It shows up in the way fathers police their daughters, in the ways that older women pass on the warnings of “Don’t be easy.” The message has been hammered in: “Sex is dangerous. Desire is dirty, and if you step out of line, you will be punished.” [15:55.3]

For women, this shame gets internalized and becomes unconscious. A woman wants to enjoy her sexuality, but she’s been told she’ll be labeled, shamed, even discarded, abandoned, exiled, if she shows too much desire, so she holds back, hides and deflects, not because she’s manipulative, but because centuries of conditioning have taught her to protect herself. What men misread as a test or a shield is often her wrestling with that legacy burden.

When critics explode at the mere mention of these old pickup-artist terms, it isn’t because they’ve proven them false with careful reasoning. It’s because these terms brush against wounds in them that were never fully healed, and most men carry their own version of this shame, especially sexual shame. For many men, the pain is in feeling invisible, humiliated, unwanted. When a woman pulls back or seems distant, it confirms a story that many men already carry: “I’m not enough. I don’t matter.” That pain is real, and when it festers, it rots. It stews. It twists perception. [17:07.8]

A woman’s defense gets read as a hostile move. Her hesitation gets read as a game, and the man, already hurting, interprets her as an enemy that needs to be conquered. This is what makes the old pickup-artist term so seductive to disaffected men. They take the sting of rejection and wrap it in a narrative of combat. “She’s testing you. Pass the test, break the shield, and you will win.” It feels empowering, but it’s not true. It’s a defense against the pain of their own shame.

There’s a powerful illustration of this in the award-winning limited series Adolescence. The show follows adolescents stumbling into their first experiences of attraction, sex, rejection. Again and again, you see the same cycle, boys taking rejection as humiliation, girls guarding themselves against being judged or used. It’s raw, it’s messy, but it reveals the truth that these aren’t games. They’re defenses against shame. [18:10.2]

Here’s where this connects to the bigger, even bigger cultural picture. Millions of disaffected men in America didn’t just feel rejected by women.  They felt rejected by society, they felt humiliated and unheard, and when Donald Trump came along, he gave voice to that resentment. He told them their anger was justified. He gave them an outlet. That’s one major reason why so many men voted for him, because they felt seen in their pain.

Now, whether you admire or despise Trump, the point here is the same. When people feel shamed, when they feel invisible, when their pain isn’t acknowledged, they lash out. They cling to distorted explanations. They follow leaders who echo their anger, and that same mechanism is at play in dating dynamics. [19:01.6]

Men cling to myths like shit tests because it gives them a story that makes sense of rejection. Critics lash out the very mention of these terms because it hits their own unhealed shame. If we want real dialogue, we can’t just condemn men for using bad terms, and we can’t just dismiss women’s defenses as games. We have to see the shame on both sides, women’s shame in being judged for sexual desire, men’s shame in feeling invisible. Both are raw. Both distort perception, and unless we can name them and face them, we’ll keep talking past each other, angry, defensive, ashamed.

Here’s where I want to take this conversation even further. Pointing the finger at men and saying, “Misogynist,” isn’t enough. It may feel satisfying to your outrage in the moment, but it doesn’t do anything to address the hurt that created the misunderstanding in the first place. If anything, it just pushes men deeper into resentment, which makes them even less able to listen. It closes the door to dialogue before it even begins. [20:10.5]

The real invitation is to go deeper, to set aside the quick judgments, and instead, approach this with both empathy and logic, not blind empathy, not excusing bad behavior, but compassionate curiosity. What’s actually going on here? What are these terms trying and failing to describe? And what wounds are hiding underneath?

For the men listening, I’d offer this question. Instead of asking, “How do I beat her shit test?” ask, “What part of me feels so threatened by her pushback that I need to frame it as combat?” That’s a much harder question. It doesn’t let you stay on the surface. It forces you to confront your insecurity, your fear of rejection, and the shame that drives it, and when you do, you’ll start to see that what looked like a battle with her was really a battle within yourself. [21:02.8]

For those who come from a liberal academic or conservative critical background, I’d suggest a parallel challenge. Instead of dismissing these men outright, what would it look like to engage them without shaming, without name-calling, without exiling them to the margins? Because when you exile people, they don’t vanish. They gather together in corners of the internet or in political movements that thrive on grievance, and then we wonder why dialogue seems impossible.

What if instead we traced their confusion back to its roots, sexual shame, cultural conditioning, families that never taught emotional literacy? What if, instead of reacting with moral panic, we sat with discomfort long enough to ask why this topic triggers such a strong response in us? Because outrage, too, comes from somewhere. When the idea of shit tests or bitch shields makes you bristle instantly, it’s not just intellectual disagreement. That’s your own nervous system firing, your own history with sexual shame coming alive. [22:09.3]

This isn’t just about men needing to own their own insecurities. It’s about all of us recognizing the places in ourselves where shame makes us reactive, defensive, quick to judge. Those are the very spots where we need to pause, to reflect, to notice which parts in us, whether it’s the inner critic, the moral enforcer or the anxious protector, which parts in us are being activated, triggered, and once we see that, we can choose a different response, a more effective one. [02:39.7]

So, the deeper invitation here is double-edged. For men, stop framing women’s defenses as games that you need to beat. Instead, look inside, claim your own insecurities and the parts holding them, and help heal them. For critics, stop reducing confused men to caricatures of misogyny. Look inside yourself. Name your own triggers and face them, because only when both sides stop hiding from shame can we begin to speak to each other honestly, not to excuse, not to shame, but to step into compassionate curiosity, to ask, not only “Why do men believe these myths?” but also “Why Does this conversation stir so much in me, both questions matter, because the truth is, the shame isn’t just out there in someone else. It’s in all of us in different ways. Courage is in facing it head on, rather than deflecting it through labels or moral outrage. [23:37.1]

So, dropping these old terms isn’t about bowing to political correctness or wokeness. It’s about truth. The claim that women are throwing out shit tests or hiding behind bitch shields is not just offensive, it’s false. Women aren’t running secret games. They’re protecting themselves. They’re filtering out insincerity. They’re defending against disappointment, manipulation or danger. To frame those defenses as games is to miss the reality of their experience entirely. [24:06.2]

So, for men, the lesson is simple but hard. True connection requires you to quit trying to pass tests or break shields, and instead respond with honesty, transparency and understanding, not with rehearsed routines, not with posturing, but with the courage to show up as yourself, to own your own attraction, to respect your freedom to say yes or no, and to do it with light fun. That’s what healthy attraction requires, not combat, but authenticity.

For critics, the takeaway is just as important. Progress does not come from canceling or name-calling. That only pushes men further into resentment and confusion. By the way, from the vantage point here in 2025, you have already lost that culture war, so now the challenge is to ask, why did these myths catch on so much in the first place? What hunger did they tap into? What pain did they mask? Then to notice your own response, critics. If this whole subject triggers outrage in you, what is that saying about your own history with sexual shame? Because if you can’t face your own triggers, you can’t help others face theirs. [25:18.7]

Let’s restate it clearly. Dropping false concepts like shit tests is not capitulation. It’s clarity. It’s compassion, and it’s the only way forward if we’re serious about healing the sexual shame that poisons both men and women.

I want to leave you with this question. What would change in our culture if men stopped seeing women’s defenses as games, and if we stopped shaming men for their confusion? What would happen if instead we met each other with honesty, curiosity and dignity?

Thank you so much for listening. If this has helped you in any way, please share it with anyone else that you think could benefit from it. If you liked it, hit a like or give it a good rating on whatever platform you’re listening to this on. If you have any feedback whatsoever, I’d love to get it. Leave a comment or send me a message or an email. I’d love to hear your feedback.Thank you again so much for listening. I look forward to welcoming you to the next episode. Until then, David Tian, signing out. [26:08.4]