the

    
   

March 11, 1998

we

 

ame has many faces.
If we are mortified at momentarily forgetting
a friend’s name, we are experiencing shame.

If we compulsively clean up before our
mother visits, we are warding off shame.

 

If our faces get red while lying on our backs,
legs spread for a pelvic exam, we are reacting
to shame.

If we are too shy to speak in front of a group,
we are suffering from shame.

If we cover our faces or say “I’m sorry” when
we cry, we are hiding our shame.

If we think we're too fat, too thin, too big, or
too small, we are contending with shame.

If we envy another's success or fear our own,
we are grappling with shame.

If we fail to go after what we want because it’s
“unfeminine,” we are stopped by shame.

If we consistently put the needs of others
ahead of our own, we are ruled by shame.

hame is the feeling of being unworthy,
adequate, or defective, expressed in
e belief that: “There’s something
ong with me.” While guilt is a
eling of regret about what I
ve done or not done that
rt someone, shame is a
ling of remorse about my
pth as a person. The self,
ore than one’s behaviour,

omes the target of

ack. As John Bradshaw
ys, “When I feel guilt, I

| that I have made a
istake, and when I feel
ame, I feel that Iam a
istake.” Small wonder that
is disturbing feeling is
equently accompanied by
ppelessness. Not only do we believe we
e flawed, we are certain we can never change. And
p become ashamed of our shame! Shame shapes

r identity as women, pervades our day to day
stence and determines the choices we make in

th minor and major arenas.

here shame comes from
e've learned as children to judge ourselves
ough the shaming eyes of others, and by the
i we reach adulthood we're often experts at
ing ourselves. In our families we may have
en rejected, emotionally abandoned, criticized or
sed. Every child needs to feel connected to
pse important to her, to know she matters as a
ique individual, and to develop competence and
st if she is to grow into a woman with a solid
se of self.
Another source of our shame as women stems
the culture in which we are raised. Most
bmen experience what I call “gender shame” as a
t of being born female in a male-dominated
iety—a society that uses shame as a way of
ping women subordinate. In subtle and not-so-
ptle ways, women are often treated as inferior

gs.

fomen defined as defective

’s look more closely at how the male-dominated
ial scheme defines women as inferior or
ective. If you were to define someone in a way

‘would keep her from becoming better or more

 

her

 
  
  
   
 
  
 
  

  

men and skame

powerful than you, what characteristics would you
assign her? You'd probably tell her that she wasn’t
very smart, that she was endearingly incompetent
(not really capable of handling the affairs of the
“real world”), that she was dependent, weak,
emotional and childlike.

That people do tend to view women in this
manner is borne out by the classic Broverman
study, in which women were defined by practicing
psychotherapists (both male and female) as
inherently weak, dependent and childlike. For
instance, when therapists were asked to describe the
characteristics of healthy men and woman, they
considered healthy women to be “more submissive,
less independent, more suggestible, less competi-
tive, more excitable in minor crises, more emo-
tional, and more concerned about their appear-
ance” than either healthy men or healthy adults.
Significantly, the characteristics deemed necessary
for healthy adults were those associated with
masculinity. I guess it’s impossible to be both adult
and female.

And so our society’s view of women
seems to be predicated on myths
that serve to demean and
shame women as inherently
weak, powerless, too
dependent, too emo-
tional, scatterbrained
and illogical. The
tragedy is we eventually
come to believe these
centuries-old preju-
dices. Granted this
research was done in
1971; nonetheless, it
reflects attitudes that still
permeate much of our
thinking. It paints a
picture of the social and
psychological climate in which
many of us were raised and
educated.

I suggest that shaming another—defining
someone as defective or lacking valued capabili-
ties—is a tactic to keep the power in the hands of

 

the powerful.

What are the roots of these myths? Of course
they don’t arise out of nowhere—they have been
part of our culture for centuries. Perhaps they stem
from male puberty rites in which the young man
had to devalue the realm of the mother in order to
enter the world of the father. Certainly the Judeo-
Christian tradition has regarded women as unclean
and inferior to men.

Centuries of
disempowerment
Once women have been
persuaded of their innate
inferiority through these
powerful myths, the male
hierarchy provides a
second means of keeping
women where they
“belong.” It takes away
their power by preventing
them from exercising
certain rights. Besides
being denied the vote, for
centuries women weren't Bs
allowed to be property owners—
instead they were property, to be
sold, beaten or used in any way their

Press

Agreeing that Womyn have always been powerful and magnificent since 1976

  
 
 
  
  
  
 
  
 
   

Women in

   
 

owner desired. Power over their lives was wielded
by their fathers, husbands or brothers. In fact,
throughout much of history, women without
husbands or extended family, were often forced to
become prostitutes or nuns in order to survive.
Today in many countries women still cannot own
or inherit property.

We still haven't fully achieved power over our
own bodies. For instance, historically, women have
been denied the right to refuse sex (in some states
men are still legally allowed to rape their wives).
There are limitations on our right to keep or
terminate a pregnancy, and we face the possibility
of even more stringent and humiliating restrictions
in the years to come. Most abhorrent of all, more
than 100 million women and girls alive today have
undergone female genital mutilation.

Oppression continues

In spite of recent gains, achieved after years of
struggle, women still suffer from unequal treatment
and sexist attitudes in a culture where most of the
power lies in the hands of white men. For instance,
in the US Senate, women, who comprise over half
our population, are less than ten percent. Females
earn roughly 30% less than males, female college
graduates earn less than male high school gradu-
ates, women comprise less than ten percent of the
CEOs in the Fortune 500 corporations, women are
still forbidden to be priests in the Catholic church.
The list goes on.

Education is an unwitting ally of
society in fostering a subtle
decline in self-esteem among
adolescent girls by
maintaining the cultural
biases. In 1992, the
American Association
University of Women
published a shocking
report that girls were
treated differently from
boys in ways that greatly
effect their self-esteem.
Teachers unknowingly
perpetuate gender
inequity by expecting more
of boys and favouring them
with more attention when soliciting
answers to questions, and calling on boys a
stunning 80% more often than girls (and not just
because boys raise their hands more). These
differing approaches are so ingrained in our culture
that teachers weren't even aware of these differences,
until they viewed themselves on video.

College erodes a girl’s view of herself
as a competent person. A study of

high school valedictorians

. % found that by the time these

iam

outstanding women

graduated from college

their intellectual self-

  

plummeted. Though
25% of the men saw
themselves as “far above
= average,” not one
woman was able to make
that claim for herself—
this in spite of excellent
achievement.

Women’s roles
The male-dominated social structure

Regular Ish + Flip Over

  
   
  
  
 
 
 
 
 

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page 4

 

Volume 22 + Issue 21

 

has found other ways of keeping women “in their

place,” by determining what roles and functions are
acceptable for them to perform. According to
psychiatrist Jean Baker Miller, author of Toward a
New Psychology of Women, those with power reserve
the most attractive functions for themselves, while
those without power are relegated the least
appealing tasks. For instance, our culture has
allotted its least desirable tasks to those with the
least amount of power. Emptying bed
pans, changing dirty diapers,
washing dirty dishes and soiled
clothes—all these tasks have
traditionally been
% assigned to women.
Lowest on the totem
pole are women of
colour, because of the
double burden of their
race and their gender.
Ironically, while these
women have cleaned
dirty houses for white
families, they have also
been entrusted with caring
for their young. Is this another
example of our distorted thinking,
that somehow nurturing roles are not
highly valued and are therefore assigned to the
group of wage earners who are usually the most
poorly paid?

Female and male shame

compared

Although both men and women struggle with
shame, women’s shame encompasses a wider area
and comes partly from different sources, Men are
ashamed when they lack power and status—in
short, when they are too much like women.
Women lack power and status and feel ashamed
because they are women. Yet if they try to be like
men, they are ashamed of being “unfeminine.”
Either way, they lose.

Healing gender shame

Thus women in our culture are particularly prone
to shame, with distinct shame-related issues. In
addition to having less power and opportunity than
men, we are demeaned for the way we do things,
the way we think and for not meeting cultural

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