A day after JoJo Fletcher took two men into the fantasy suite on The Bachelorette, the show's season 10 star, Andi Dorfman, is speaking out on her own experience.
The 29-year-old opened up to The Hollywood Reporter, writing a guest column for the magazine in which she revealed that the fantasy suite dates aren't always what they seem -- and sometimes they are.
"Almost every Bachelor has sex with everyone he goes into the fantasy suites with," she said. "And yet we as a society will go so far as to call a woman a slut for having sex with two men that she's been dating."
Like Fletcher, Dorfman took two of her final three men to fantasy suites on her season of The Bachelorette -- Nick Viall and Josh Murray (both of whom will be appearing on the upcoming season of Bachelor in Paradise). While intimacy is often expected between the lead and their final picks, Viall outed her for sleeping with both him and Murray on live television, during the After the Final Rose special.
"When it came to the finale, and the live revelation from Nick that we had been physically intimate, I was even more shocked and unprepared [for the backlash]," she recalled. "I saw clips of national news anchors on TV calling me a slut. Verbatim. On live national television, calling me a slut."
According to Dorfman, the show (and society) operates on a complete double standard. "The Bachelor is never called a manwhore. But when a woman who is in the same exact situation does it, she gets labeled a slut and it's all of a sudden newsworthy," she said.
"It's interesting that the Bachelorettes, like myself and JoJo and Kaitlyn Bristowe [who admitted to sleeping with Viall -- the same man who outted Dorfman -- to the other men mid-way through her own Bachelorette season], have had to become the example and go through the slut-shaming in order to shed some light on the issue," Dorfman wrote. "It's a conversation to be had, for better or worse."
"The fantasy suites are stretched out over a two-week timespan," Dorfman explained, adding that Bachelorettes should be able to become intimate with "two men whose families she's met, who have professed their love to her and two men she has feelings for," without consequence or judgement. "It does come in one quick episode, but this isn't back-to-back like viewers see," she said in her defense.
The former Bachelorette concludes her column with a piece of advice to future Bachelorettes. "You'll get vilified for being open and honest, but if you're not, you can get labeled as fake. So sometimes it's not a win-win to speak out," she offers. "Let's be real about it. You can't rationalize the irrational. You can't change somebody's mind, and you can't live your life for other peoples' opinions. You're not living if you do."
Dorfman has also been open about her experience on the show in her new book, It' Not Okay: Turning Heartbreak Into Happily Never After.
As for current Bachelorette Fletcher, who sent two men home on Monday night's episode, she'll have to face the men she eliminated -- and the masses -- on Tuesday night's Men Tell All special, before the show's season finale on Aug. 1.
Catch up on Monday's episode in the video below.