They allude to sex every single second. But when it actually happens? Everyone freaks out.

Looks like the US is having some major problems with their main man on the latest season of The Bachelor. Some major ‘everybody hates this Bachelor because he is a total douche’ kind of problems.

Juan Pablo is a Venezuelan soccer player with a young daughter, which is basically The Bachelor’s version of the man jackpot; sexy, exotic sports star meets sensitive single dad. Except then he goes and does things like call gay people “more pervert” and treats his doting selection of women on the show like total crap.

Social media has been buzzing with dislike for the current US Bachelor, but that hatred exploded even further this week when Pablo slept with with a woman on the show, then told her in front of the cameras that he regretted it and was disappointed that she had broken the ‘rules’.

The man dating (and making out with) several women at once, had sex with a woman then shamed her for being too slutty.

Everybody knows that The Bachelor is a show that has some weird issues with sex. The whole show is basically about parading 25 women in front of a man and having him test each one out until he selects his ‘perfect’ match. Sex is implied, but only on the show’s terms: towards the end, when there’s about three women left, in a ‘romantic’, rose-petal strewn ‘overnight suite’.

Clare, the ‘slutty’ contestant in question, decided to deviate from those unspoken rules. Here’s how it went down:

Juan Pablo had been showering her with almost exclusive attention all day. He made out with her in front of all the other girls, before inviting her back to his hotel room for some more making out in his pool. Feeling like she had something special going with him, Clare then decided to sneak up to Pablo’s hotel room in the middle of the night.

She asked him to go swimming with her – an invitation he immediately accepted – then they did the deed. In an interview with the camera that night, Juan Pablo seemed very pleased with himself, grinning while saying things like “Ay yai yai. Clare – she’s on fire. The waves were wild. We got a little wild too.”

The next day, Clare was beside herself with happiness.

Then came ‘the talk’.

Pablo basically indicated that he wished the night before hadn’t happened. He said the only reason he agreed to her invitation was because she’s very shy and he didn’t want to discourage her from putting herself out there. “I hope nobody knows,” he said. “It was a little weird for me. I’m too fair with people.”

He also kept referring to his daughter, saying “… it wasn’t right. I have a daughter, I don’t want her to see what happens, if she sees it.” He kept saying that he was okay, but he was disappointed that it happened.

Clare began to cry, which visibly annoyed him. “Don’t cry anymore. Can you stop crying?” he kept saying. “Look at me. I don’t like it when you don’t look at me,” he chided her, as he kept physically pulling her face back in his direction like a naughty child. Clare was shattered and confused: “It wasn’t my intention to disrespect your daughter,” she kept saying between sobs.

But can you blame her for being so upset? Juan Pablo showered Clare with attention, slept with her, then blamed her for seducing him into an encounter that he ‘didn’t really want’ on national TV. Clare had broken the rules by being too forward, too ‘slutty’, and now she was paying the humiliating price.

All she did was act on a sexual attraction she had with a man she was techinically dating. But Bachelorettes aren’t supposed to be too sexually eager – they’re just supposed to mould themselves into whatever The Bachelor wants them to be, and patiently wait to be called on when asked. As Willa Paskin at Slate put it:

Clare did exactly what the show and Juan Pablo purport to want the women on the show to do: to be themselves, to do what they would do if the cameras weren’t there, to try and have genuine interactions with the titular bachelor. But because she ran afoul of the show’s selectively Victorian sensibility and did not leave decisions about when to have sex on television to the show or Juan Pablo, she basically got slut-shamed by both.

At her own expense, Clare exposed The Bachelor’s sexual ethos, which is that the women are supposed to be relatively innocent and chaste, up until the moment the man calls on them to stop being so. (While Clare and Juan Pablo were doing the deed, another contestant—a 32-year-old single mother—was chortling that Juan Pablo had finally kissed her, like a teenager celebrating her first smooch. She was playing the game correctly.)

It’s a fine line Bachelorettes must walk; being forward enough to keep yourself in the game but not so forward that you’re no longer considered ‘the marrying type’. Very few women are successful at the balancing act, and those who are, are ususally the women who win.

But this time, it looks like it’s The Bachelor himself who has taken things too far. The internet exploded with disbelief and hatred at the way Juan Pablo treated Clare. Even the host of the US Bachelor, Chris Harrison, had this to say:

When she showed up he was fully into it like this is awesome and sexy and she was as happy as can be and then he turns around and treats her like all of a sudden she did something wrong and broke the rules. It was not only confusing, but it was borderline rude. We even told him as much, but he didn’t see it that way. Even though he apologized later I don’t think he really understood how cheap he made her feel. In my deliberation I said, “You’re not getting this, you really hurt her feelings, you need to fix it and apologize.”

The Bachelor is hardly a show anchored in reality, and most of us (myself included, obviously) watch it for shits and giggles. And now that it’s in it’s 18th US season and there are mulitple versions all over the world, I think it’s fair to say that the women who go on this show know what they are getting themselves into.

But no woman deserves to be slut-shamed. Especially not one who is just doing what the show encourages – trying to win the man (and especially not by the man who has already made out with several other ladies). It’s fine to laugh at a show that’s premise is kind of ridiculous (I probably do it more than anyone). But when it comes to the dreaded ‘sex stuff’, will The Bachelor ever be anything but icky and uncomfortable?

Do you watch The Bachelor? Do you think the ‘all about sex but not actual sex’ dynamic is a little weird?