Shame

When I was in Germany wearing a skirt and riding a bicycle my motto was "no shame." It was meant to remind me that no matter how careful I was, at some point my skirt would fly into my face. It also applied to what I was doing, which was offering to teach people about my religion. The bible says (somewhere) "Be not ashamed of the gospel of Christ," which is an important reminder when you're being treated as we are treated the world over. I even got exorcised once. My reaction even now is a combination of anger and hilarity. The anger is distinctly un-Christlike, and I am sorry for it.

When I teach my students how to avoid shaming language (they all think they need to write about obesity in a class where the professor is clearly not in a nineteen-year-old body anymore) I teach them it's the difference between "to be" verbs and strong verbs. "Miley Cyrus is a skank" is slut shaming, and is problematic. "Miley Cyrus dances badly" is criticism. It's not a perfect rule, but it's a start, to encourage them to pay attention and make their raw reactions more meaningful.

The problem I have with shame and shaming is that it's ultimately a means society uses to emotionally enforce conformity. It's a people thing, and society is very often totally wrong. Their rightness and wrongness is not the most important operant principle, though. Even when "society" is morally right, the only way shaming can work to bring deviant behaviors into an externally forced normal is if the person exhibiting those behaviors feels fear about people. They would have to be afraid of us. I would have to be afraid of them. We would have to be afraid of us. All The Time.

Here's where people who use shaming need to stop and think about what they're doing: yes, we might want to rid the world of Mormonism, pornography, or that particular shade of angry mustard, but Shame doesn't work that way: because you can't actually change how somebody feels or thinks about something just because more people believe differently; the marginalized and shamed will seek each-other out. Shaming just establishes mainstream and sub-cultures, and being a sub-culture has a kind of prestige, as counter-intuitive as that might be for some modes of life. Like people who wear mustard yellow. We might be pleasers, but we're not supposed to fear the opinions of other people. My holy scripture says so.

Moroni was a prophet at the end of The Book of Mormon who tried to teach a warlike people to follow God. They turned on him and tried to kill him (nobody likes being told that what they're doing is wrong, even if you use "doing" language instead of shaming - it's simply not an enjoyable experience), and he hid in a cave for a ridiculously long time and took notes on metal plates of all the things he saw. After a particularly adamant condemnation of the practice of infant baptism, he remarks, "Behold, I speak with boldness, having authority from God; and I fear not what man can do; for perfect love casteth out all fear" (Moroni 8:16). He doesn't shame those evil infant baptizers. He doesn't pull social pressure into play at all. He loves his people very much, which is why watching them do wrong pains him so deeply. He explains the doctrine and consequences of an incorrect practice (though he's not above some fiery language). And he knows that people will change when they fear God more than people. And by "fear" I mean "consider the opinions of." Real cultural change only happens when people care more about what God thinks than what we think.

Moroni's antidote to his own social pressure was perfect love. I don't know how to make my love perfect, or how to get such a thing as perfect love, but I'd like to be free of fear, which is why I refuse to succumb to paranoia or conspiracy theory.

In the meantime, if you want to eradicate a social practice, try using the government and the legal system as a social weapon: your enemies probably already do. It's a bit unweildy, but if you have enough money you've got leverage.

And on that note of cynicism, here's a youtube clip: