To Ask “What’s wrong with shame?”

[MoveToParis]

As a society we have mostly abandoned shame and now seem to view shame as universally bad.

I don’t think that’s true, I think it has its place and if someone behaves shamefully then why shouldn’t they feel shame?

If you are prepared to own your behaviour then other people’s opinion won’t bother you. But if your behaviour (and I include my own in this) has to be kept like a grubby little secret, then maybe a bit of shame won’t do any harm in the long run.

Can I ask further about this? When you think about the choices actions for which you felt shame, why do you think you stopped?

Also, if you or a young person today made the same choices/carried out the same actions what reaction would they get? (And it may be an eye-roll because times have changed)

But sometimes our behaviour indicates who we are.
If I passed you in the street and said “you fucking ugly cunt, stay in the zoo” (something that was said to me) then I would absolutely want to name and shame that person. I would want to say in front of their colleagues and children that this is who they are (not what they’ve done)

I'm not sure about shame, but I think we should be vocal about judging more. It astounds me when people do dumb things, they should be judged and maybe they'll think twice about doing it again

People make mistakes, it's wrong to brand people as "intrinsically who they are". Pedophiles, serious abusers, some sex offenders, etc. Some people should be locked away until death. There isn't always answers for some PD, MH and very damaged people, think rose west etc. But most people don't fall into thise categories.

@WickieRoy what counts as immoral and why isn't guilt enough?

I agree with you, OP. Far too many people excuse and or turn a blind eye to shameful behaviour and far too many of the perpetrators get away with it.

I only know that every time I have turned a blind eye to (or even made an excuse for) shameful behaviour, it messes with my values and my boundaries.

Interesting. We use a traffic light behaviour system in the school I work in where if a child behaves poorly the move their name from green to amber or em red depending on the behaviour. So fighting, hurting others, bullying, etc are red behaviour and things like repeatedly talking during learning times, being disrespectful to staff, disrupting lessons, deliberately damaging school equipment etc is amber. It has been suggested that children who remain on green all week receive a reward of ‘golden time’ at the end of the week which is basically an hour where they get to choose something fun to do. This was rejected by the head because it would ‘shame’ those have behave poorly. What do people think?

The traffic light system is shaming.
Rewarding well behaved kids isn't.

Your school is very confused.

I agree with the head, but for a different reason.
I don’t like golden time , and would propose that each child has to walk past you on Friday as they left. If everyone on got words of praise and recognition, plus things to work on then there is no differentiation but there is one on one feedback.

Shame can stop people reaching out for help, so in the coke example you give. Shame may actually keep them doing it for longer as they feel they can't ask for help, or talk to people about it. Shame can have a very silencing effect, which I never think is a good thing.

So what would you say to/about recreational coke users. Also, in this example, isn’t that just blame shifting “It’s OK for me to take coke because you shamed me for it”?

But that’s the desire to shame the person over observable behaviour. The feeling of shame is about who we are as people. Shame = I am a bad/unacceptable person.
Guilt = My behaviour is bad/unacceptable.

The research suggested that this kind of intervention tends to produce superficial change or cheating/hiding things.

I’m not willing to share the personal details but what I felt shame about, some would agree that it’s shameful, others not. Some still think, for example, that homosexuality is something to be shameful of.

All behaviour has meaning in context - so if any of us think about times we have behaved unreasonably there will be reasons. That doesn’t negate the need to judge certain behaviours as wrong and to require intervention- murder, abuse, etc.

Shaming is a deeply embedded social strategy - even pre-human, as some other primates do it. At the most primitive level, it's a threat to survival because it cuts you off from community protection (see 'menstruation huts', for instance).

It isn't going anywhere. I think what you might be talking about is inappropriate shaming, like the person who tried to shame you for your appearance. You said you'd like to name & shame that person - what you're saying here is that they 'shamed' you, so you'd like to retaliate! Fair enough, I reckon.

There is a lot of noise at the moment about shaming; it mostly seems to be generated by people who want to shame others who disapprove of them. Don't kink-shame, they say. Actually, I think a lot of kinks deserve to be shamed. I won't be reverse-shamed into pretending I'm okay with what they do: I'm not ashamed of having an opinion on it.

Fat-shaming's another one. It can seriously harm people's mental health but there are plenty of people with very strong views on physical condition, who aren't ashamed of their position and will justify it to their last breath. To an extent, we have to live with the fact that nobody gets 100% social approval. We will all shame and be shamed some of the time.

Your headline asks what's wrong with shame? Everything if you're the one feeling it: it's an awful sensation. It's supposed to feel horrible, that's the point. But dishing it out and receiving it are basic human behaviours so, in that sense, it's no more wrong than laughter. Just gotta deal with it!

That behaviour is abhorrent, (sorry you experienced that), and the behaviour should be dealt with. Publicly saying that is unacceptable behaviour is fine. I don’t see calling out that behaviour as shaming. I see that as calling out clearly unacceptable behaviour. ‘Mr X, on this date, said XYZ and that behaviour is abhorrent and unacceptable’ isn’t shaming in itself. They may feel shame but that’s a seperate issue.

Sorry I don't agree with you here.

There are countless threads on this forum about children who have behaved appallingly, deliberately hurting someone or bullying or whatever, but consequences that include shaming them for this behaviour is almost always universally shouted down as bad.

Personally I think if you are shamed by someone addressing your behaviour, then good. It at least shows you understand you should be ashamed. It's those that don't ever feel badly about their own behaviour that people need to be wary of.

This is very different. Shaming will never be as effective as educating a child as to why their behaviour is inappropriate.
I grew up when physical punishment of children was appropriate and everyone I speak with only had one reaction towards their parent who did that which was “I don’t like you and I don’t trust you”. Oh, and fear.
My kid shared a homophobic video the other day which she thought was funny. We had to have a calm conversation about prejudice, hate speech, making assumption about people on the basis of their looks etc. and also to hear her point of view as to why she thought it was funny and appropriate to share. We didn’t shame her but she did feel shame. But her shame was driven by the new found awareness of the complexities around acceptance and kindness. If I were to shout “shame on you, no phone for a year” it wouldn’t have had quite the same effect.

Bring back the stocks. I wonder how keen people would be to cheat on their spouses or not pick up their dog shit or steal glasses from their pals if the result would be an appropriate amount of time in the stocks having mouldy fruit chucked at them by passerby?

Things you think are morally wrong are pretty different to shame. Shame is mainly female focused - period shame, walk of shame etc

So you did shame your daughter then. You just did it in a more intelligent way.

If that's how you choose to call it. To me shaming is synonymous with belittling someone which we did not do. Yes, she was ashamed of her actions but this was not our primary goal. Our goal was to explain our perspective to her and hope that she will come on board with our way of thinking. This isn't always the case, mind. As a teen, she has a mind of her own and as much as I disapprove of her choices sometimes, she needs to learn to make them independently.

Having being married to someone who felt no guilt or shame for how they behaved, I really learnt the value of these emotions, and why we evolved to have them. These are pro-social emotions. They cause you to reflect on the harm you have caused to another and to seek to repair the harm you caused and the relationship you rifted, and then to avoid doing similar again in the future. I found to my deep cost that a relationship cannot survive where at least one of the partners cannot feel guilt or shame.

I don't really understand. At no point did I say anything about shouting at someone and/or removing possessions? Or physical punishment?

I was more thinking of a recent thread where the OP's son had been involved in bullying a girl in his year by calling her a butch lesbian. Punishment and consequences recommended were things like writing her a letter which to my mind is a minor irritant rather than actually hammering home how hurt this girl must have felt (regardless that as a grown woman if I were called a butch lesbian I'd be completely unbothered). Under those circumstances I don't think that being called out publicly at school is bad. Maybe then it hammers home the humiliation they caused and yes, causes them to feel some shame.

Except shame (and guilt sometimes ) is often used to actually harm people.

Here are two concrete examples years of social shame.

Women still feel shame when they are raped or are victims of DV .