When women in geek communities call out a man in the community for bad behavior towards women, the responses often focus on the claimed intrinsic negative qualities of shaming, "call-out culture", or social ostracism, rather than on the behavior that elicited the shaming. The implication is that whatever harm the man did, the purported harm his critics did to him by talking about his behavior in public is worse. Thus, excoriations of "shaming" can be a silencing tactic.