despite everything, it’s still you

That’s not to say it’s bad or done by bad people. Often it IS venting. Saying “shame on you” is cathartic. Many people posting guilt trip activism are beaten down or burned out. They might feel like shame is the only tool left in their box, or they might just need to vent. Calling out shameful behaviour is not an inherently bad thing.

But it’s important to remember that the impulse to shame others - especially if they listen, especially if they change - is a nasty rewarding little bastard. It’s rewarding, it feels good, it gives that person power and control. It’s a shortcut button! It’s an addictive one!

we can picture a parent/educator/leader who uses shaming too much as a tool, and we can understand how ineffective they are (and sometimes, how effective they are!) and the negative impact that they have on people. Leaning on the shortcut button is bad for your own character, too - it means you don’t develop your skills beyond shaming.

The trick is to disengage from that cycle of shame and reward; don’t let it become the only tool in your box! It’s bad for you as well.

Zooming out, shame is a dominance behaviour that relates to the rules of the society the person operates in. It’s tremendously ineffective to shame me for (for example) being bisexual, because according to my rules , it’s highly embarrassing and sad to be anything else. There are cultures with a framework that makes it extremely shameful to be bisexual, and people who are abused to make them fit into the framework; all of society is expected to participate in regular shaming and censure and guilting to ensure that nobody expresses bisexuality. Effective shaming requires there to be agreed-upon rules of what’s unacceptable; using shaming as a tool shows the framework of what’s considered unacceptable, and REQUIRES the framework to be in place.

It’s damn hard to kinkshame or bully furries on tumblr. Everyone has agreed that they aren’t doing anything shameful. But it is easy to shame them in an American megachurch.

But historically shame has worked, hasn’t it? How come you can easily picture a Victorian female activist shaming the powerful men of Parliament for their treatment of orphaned children? How come you can picture it working? Because they all operated in a Christian framework that stated children should be cared for, and women appealed to the religious authority as being above the authority of the state. Religious appeals have been effective in the past, offering a separate set of rules to control behaviour, hence the rise of right-wing attempts to consolidate religious power as well.

From this flow a couple of things:

1. a culture that relies on shame (and disgust and fear) to control people is going to be more oppressive than one that doesn’t. It’s also going to have very controlling, very detailed, very specific frameworks in place. To shame Gays, it has to be agreed-upon that it is Wrong to be Gay, so they’ll install a framework of Being Illegal to be Gay. You have to install the buttons in order to press them.

2. At any point, people can simply decide not to be ashamed. Despite tremendous social pressure in times and places, queer people have been proud. Despite knowing exactly what the public think of them, people practice hobbies, kinks, fashion, beliefs, and behaviours that other people don’t like. They always do and they always have. Shame stops being a weapon when people don’t care; they can simply decline to hold the button for you to press any more. Shame requires that everyone consent to the framework! Hence the anxiety about “normalising” queer liberation, or the existence of trans people - the fear is that if trans people stop being afraid and guilty, the buttons will break, and there will not only be more trans people, but they’ll be hard to control.

What flows from that are that people can resist shame effectively if they have a community that supports them. You can find this sympathetic (queer people support each other and resist shame) or distressing (a loved one falls down a conservative social media rabbit hole that turns them into a horrible person.) but it shows that shame wears off as a tool the instant that people decide to stop caring, especially if they have help. “Who cares if I lose YOUR good opinion, when that gives me THEIR good opinion?”

But finally - the reason shaming hasn’t fixed the world yet (by anyone’s definition) is because truly powerful people just don’t feel much shame. They don’t consent to the framework where other people’s opinion have any weight. They believe they’re in charge of society and therefore free of consequences or needing to care. Their first step when installing frameworks and buttons is to make a rule saying “I don’t have any buttons and nobody is allowed to press them.” This is what exactly why they sought the power to begin with. Shame requires that everyone agree that we are all social animals and our opinions of each other are worth something - powerful people do not think we are worth anything.