What is so shameful about a bra strap that is, wittingly or unwittingly, visible? What is the problem with a leaked image or video of a public/private act of intimacy, other than cases where consent was not taken? A messy divorce or any consenting relationship between adults? Or having a different sexual orientation? A profession that is entirely legal but doesn’t align with someone else’s frequency?
Slut-shaming, body-shaming, age-shaming, wardrobe malfunction-shaming – you name it, and we have it!
What are we on about? Why is the end game, ever so often, shaming? Why is it our default weapon of choice?
Here’s the deal: there is no shame in wearing or not wearing something. There is no shame either in looking at someone. The shame – starting from the first ounce down to the last smidgen – belongs to the person or the group that thinks that these acts or behaviours are things to be shameful about. The shame belongs to the person who amplified a non-issue. The shame belongs to the one who shamed you.
If shaming for what we do or the choices we make is unacceptable, then let’s begin to imagine what it means to be shamed for who we are, where we have no choice in the matter!
Shaming people for who they are on the basis of gender, race, religion, orientation – and what they cannot change – is dastardly and deplorable. And increasingly, there seems to be no respite from this kind of unfair shaming.
From my own experience, I have known shame as an emotion that destroys self-worth with intensity and intricacy, and unless you are ultra careful, you start seeing yourself in ways that are consistent with disapproval.
You find yourself exhausted and exasperated explaining a behaviour to yourself or to others. It is what makes you feel small, weak, inadequate and can drive you or the behaviour underground.
It puts people in an impossible state of feeling deficient and unable to either deal with or correct the thing in question. The only question in such cases is asking what is worse – the absurdity of it all or the futility therein.
The thing is, even the best of us don’t have the vocabulary to understand shaming. What transpired in our childhood and adolescence is, if you have enough pluck and luck, sometimes understood as shaming when we become adults. When abuse is not understood as abuse, where is the solution going to come from?
There’s a ton of empirical evidences that correlates shaming with stress, paranoia and anxiety disorders. In cases where this is inflicted by a primary caregiver or a parent, the memories are vivid and lasting and require healing of another magnitude.
We have codified shame in human society. It is the ideal tool to enforce a code of conduct, as it were. Except, it’s not.
Being sensitive to another person’s dignity is both central to the relationship and the other person’s self-image. Where this is not available, do not stop yourself from doing (or not doing) something because of shame. Please feel free to be utterly shameless. Become ‘unshameable’.